What advice would you give to yourself 10 years ago?
"Delegate more."

What is the best career advice you've learned?
"Stick to what you believe in."

What are some of the challenges you've encountered during your career?
"Manufacturing our own product has been a major challenge — managing people, ordering materials, meeting delivery dates, planning production schedules, etc. Manufacturing in the U.S., of course, comes with its own challenges. Getting our foot in the door with department store buyers and other retailers — when we started, our specific type of contemporary swimwear didn’t have a place at many department stores. Since my background is couture, my ideas are sometimes too complicated to be mass-produced, which can be a challenge. Lisa comes in and applies her knowledge to help translate my designs and engineer the garment so that it can flow through production more easily."