From Tech to Tides: Laura M. Mackay’s Product Design Approach to Luxury Swimwear

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Luxury swimwear is rarely treated like a true product design challenge. Most brands prioritize style over performance, leaving many women to choose between looking good and feeling secure in the water. Yet demand keeps climbing. The global swimwear market was valued at USD 23,096.4 million in 2023 and is expected to reach USD 36,150.5 million by 2030, with a CAGR of 6.8% from 2024 to 2030.

Increasing numbers of people are turning to water activities for health, sports, and recreation, and this shift is driving market growth. The rise of international water sports and wellness-focused lifestyles is pushing more consumers into lakes, rivers, and oceans. According to the Livestrong Foundation, more than 91 million Americans, or roughly 31 percent of the population, swim in natural bodies of water each year. Outdoor swimming continues to surge thanks to its physical and mental benefits, and this trend is playing a major role in expanding the swimwear market.

Laura M. Mackay, Founder & CEO of Mina™ swimwear, saw the gap between beauty and performance and refused to treat it as inevitable. A Detroit-born product designer with Silicon Valley roots and a life built around open water, she’s using her problem-solving mindset to build Mina™ swimwear, a luxury swim brand made to let women move freely, beautifully, and without compromise.

Mackay spent years designing products at “Google, Intuit, and women-led wellbeing startups, where structured discovery, rapid iteration, and systems thinking informed every aspect. She brought those habits with her when she began building Mina™ swimwear. “As a product designer, I usually build a Vision and then scale it back in iterative steps,” she says. “That same methodology applied to the suits.”

A key difference in her process is the depth of user testing. Mackay didn’t design from a studio table; she designed from the water. She wore every comparative suit she could find and swam daily in her own samples, both in the ocean and the pool. She invited women with different body types to test fit, comfort, and movement. Instead of letting style dictate performance, she let performance shape the right aesthetic.

Systems thinking also guided the brand. “Creating design systems to create consistency for your brand is a hallmark of my industry,” she explains. Mina™ suits repeat core elements, like back-strap placement and mesh usage, to keep the line cohesive and intuitive. Even in fashion, systems reduce decision fatigue and keep the product focused on purpose.

Mackay’s approach is simple: build swimwear with the rigor of tech product design and the soul of an athlete. The result is a brand that treats women’s movement as the standard, not an afterthought.

(Courtesy)

Readers looking to improve their own creative or entrepreneurial process can take three clear lessons from her transition:

1. Start With Discovery, Not Assumptions
Instead of assuming what women wanted from swimwear, Mackay documented what wasn’t working, then tested solutions in real water. Daily use, especially under pressure, revealed everything from strap performance to the “perfect butt” curve. This is a reminder that real-world testing beats speculation, especially for products that involve movement or comfort.

2. Build a Vision, Then Iterate Down
Mackay comes from a field where you sketch big, then scale back with intention. “Even while learning new materials and finishes, the core design process held steady,” she says. For creatives, this is a practical approach: start with possibilities, then constraints, then refine. This protects the creative spark while keeping the end product grounded.

3. Use Systems to Avoid Reinventing Every Detail
Many designers resist repetition, but Mackay argues that consistency actually improves the work. Mesh appears across styles not only as an aesthetic choice but as a structural one. Strap systems repeat because they work. Building a system around what works keeps a brand coherent and keeps creators focused on higher-level improvements.

Her decision to self-fund the company also shaped her philosophy. “I wanted to create something that reflects my background, product design, painting, swimming, and my desire to improve humanity and my own family history,” she says. She avoided outside funding to protect the company’s mission. For anyone entering entrepreneurship, her approach is a reminder that financing shapes a business’s identity. You don’t have to scale fast to build something meaningful.

Mackay also draws heavily from her Detroit upbringing. “I knew I could do the hard work because I’m from Detroit,” she says. She grew up valuing honest work and effort, and she kept that mindset while building Mina™ on nights and weekends. “Hustling didn’t scare me because I am from Detroit and don’t expect what you want in life to be easy at first.” For other founders, this mindset offers something simple but often lost: progress comes from accumulation, not bursts.

When it comes to design features, Mackay focuses on letting women move freely and confidently. “The suit, like the Now Mina™, uses cut-outs to support the woman’s body, but has cut-out sides and a back to make them feel like they are wearing a two-piece while they are swimming,” she explains. The use of mesh was inspired by figure skating costumes, where elegance and support must coexist. Her suits aim to deliver that same balance.

Designing With Principles, Listening With Intention
Underpinning the brand are three values: sovereignty, innovation, and decisive action. Mackay defines sovereignty as the ability for women to move without restriction, physically and beyond. Innovation appears in the consistent design elements and in the research that shaped them. Decisive action guides her business choices, a mindset she credits to former CEO Lynn Perkins, who taught her to make the best decision with the information available and keep moving.

She spent nights at her kitchen table working with her consultant, a designer with years of experience creating swimwear for Aviator Nation, O’Neill, and other Velcro Valley brands. Their shared craft of sketching made the collaboration seamless. Many product designers in tech do not draw, and that skill has been her quiet advantage. It helped her become a strong designer, bridge industries, and learn quickly.

Laura M. Mackay’s story is not just about swimwear. It is about bringing problem-solving skills from one field into another and letting lived experience close the gaps. It also illustrates how constraints like self-funding, time pressure, and new materials can sharpen the result. Her path shows that design gets stronger when it pulls from different parts of life, stays rooted in real testing, and treats values as part of the build rather than an afterthought.

In Partnership with APG

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