Meet Jimaye Nguyen of Jimaye in West Hollywood

Today we’d like to introduce you to Jimaye Nguyen.

Thanks for sharing your story with us Jimaye. So, let’s start at the beginning and we can move on from there.
Made in Los Angeles, California, Jimaye swimwear is a men’s swimwear brand that truly has it all. Jimaye Swimwear started because of my struggles with swimwear. To start, I wanted to swim briefs, which are not very common in the USA. Of a couple of brands in the USA that do swim briefs, they all had tacky designs, horrible fits, low-quality fabrics, or sold for $150 per the brief. I didn’t understand why a little piece of fabric sewn together cost so much. So in 2018, I went on a mission to make it more affordable while maintaining quality, sophisticated designs, great fits, and then taking it one step further: Instead of giving customers one design, our reversible swim briefs give customers two designs. That means you carry less, buy less, pack less, but you have MORE. Our prices are half of our luxury brand competitors and they get two designs. That’s one design for a quarter of the cost of our luxury competitors.

Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
The path to entrepreneurship has been anything BUT easy. My professional experience prior to this company includes working in Sales, Marketing, and Operations at various sized companies including non-profits, start-ups, small privately-owned companies, and big corporate companies. It was great to have such a wide breadth of experience but I never actually started my own company from the very beginning. I didn’t realize how much it costs to start a business. There were a lot of surprise expenses: warehouse costs, legal costs, etc. that I just didn’t plan for. Fortunately, I worked full-time while starting this company which allowed me to fund it entirely on my own.

Also, being a one man show, there was just a lot to keep track of. Product development, ordering fabrics, accounting, marketing, operations, sales, fulfillment, wholesale, and the list goes on and on. When you are just ONE person doing it all, there are bound to be mistakes. One mistake I made was ordering five times as much fabric as I needed. That would have resulted in a lot of waste but instead of dwelling on it, I shifted my mindset to figure out how I could make MORE sales so that I would use up all the fabric. I’m happy to say, my mistake became a huge forcing function that pushed me to even greater success.

My biggest learning about entrepreneurship is that you WILL fail. And you will fail OFTEN. Marketing campaigns will not work, you will design something people don’t like, you will hire the wrong person (all of this happened to me). But you just have to realize that failing is the only way to learn. When you fail, be sure to learn and then pivot quickly. Do not spend time dwelling it the failure as that is not a good use of your time.

Please tell us about your business.
Jimaye swimwear specializing in unique, multifunctional swimwear at an affordable price. Our swim briefs are reversible which is new to the men’s market. Our swim shorts are made to be worn around town or at the beach/pool. This year we are making our way into textured swimwear with velvet swim briefs and faux suede swim shorts. In addition, we are introducing leather crowns that are perfect for NYE, parties, and music festivals. Our brand is all about having fun and looking good doing it.

There’s a lot to be proud of but the thing I am most proud of was getting into and completing an accelerator here in LA called Grid110. There were over 200 applicants and only 20 companies were chosen. The program was such a phenomenal experience as it introduced me to a network of really awesome entrepreneurs and gave me all the resources and mentorship to fast track the growth of my company.

Is there a characteristic or quality that you feel is essential to success?
Being confident in my ability to figure anything out. I had NO experience in swimwear and I think that was the best part. I went in really questioning every part of the production and manufacturing. Even though I didn’t have the experience, I was confident in my ability to learn and also hire others who had the expertise that I didn’t. Now I can confidently say I am an expert in the field but it’s important to know that as an entrepreneur starting a company, you don’t have to know everything right away. You should learn it but don’t let lack of knowledge stop you from doing something you want to do.

My company is completely bootstrapped. I made a conscious decision to do this because I think there is something about putting your own money on the line that forces you to be creative with how you build your company. You have to be scrappy and resourceful. I think people get wasteful when they have funding because they have all this money. I will potentially raise money in the future because creating my own inventory has huge costs associated with it but I want to see how far I could get on my own before I do.

The last thing is to be kind to yourself. Don’t put too much pressure on yourself. When I started out, I would often say to myself “I just want to see how far I can get.” That took a lot of pressure off of me because I wasn’t trying to be the next unicorn. I was just seeing how far I could push myself and do MY best.

Contact Info:

• Website: jimaye.com
• Email: jimaye@jimaye.com

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