Onia is upping its game — the New York-based luxury swimwear and resortwear brand has added activewear to the assortment.
“We saw this as an opportunity to expand the voice of Onia with more versatile items,” Nathan Romano, cofounder and managing member of Onia, said in an exclusive interview. “In 2020 there were a lot of shutdowns. But consumers took to online and were still traveling and working remotely and buying our products. So we started thinking about what else consumers are doing outside. They’re not just swimming. They’re hiking; they’re playing tennis. A huge trend has been cross-functional. So we’re thinking about more versatile items.
“And people are always itching for new products from us,” he added. “So being in the swim and resort space, activewear just felt natural for us.”
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The inaugural activewear collection, which ranges in price from $95 to $150, is made up of roughly 30 pieces, both men’s and women’s, including sports bras, leggings, biker shorts, T-shirts and hybrid swim shorts. Sizes range from XS to XL for women and small to XL for men.
“Everything is multifunctional,” Romano said. “It’s designed to be worn to many different activities. Pieces can be worn to the gym, but are also lifestyle pieces.”
The activewear launch reflects Onia’s greater shift, which is evolving into a full lifestyle brand with things like rain, winter and fall collections on the horizon, as well as additions such as puffer jackets, cashmere and flannel pieces.
“We’re not just summer or resort anymore,” Romano explained. “We’re starting to develop into winter wear; we’re starting to see all seasons with more multifunctional items, technical and utility, and we’re playing with fabrics. It’s going to be a more year-round seasonal brand, rather than a one-dimensional summer brand. That translates into all four seasons for us.”
Romano and Carl Cunow launched Onia online in 2009. The brand opened its first brick-and-mortar shop in March 2020, just one week before the pandemic and subsequent lockdowns landed Stateside. While the retail shop was able to stay open for some time, offering same-day delivery service to Manhattan residents, and later launching a summer pop-up shop in the Hamptons, the cofounder said the brand is currently focused on its e-commerce site and related app, as well as its wholesale business, to grow. Wholesale partners include Saks Fifth Avenue, Nordstrom, Revolve and Mr Porter, among others. Romano said future brick-and-mortar stores are likely in Onia’s future — including such locales as California and Florida — it’s too soon to tell.
He declined to comment on Onia’s annual revenues, only to say that the business has grown each year, beating internal expectations in the process. So much so that Onia had to air freight in products during the recent holiday shopping season.
“Because we couldn’t keep up with demand,” Romano said. “But we were able to work with factories to beat the market.
“The rise of Onia has been really quite phenomenal and seeing these new categories come to life,” he added.