Ali Mejia and Mariela Rovito, Eberjey: From Self-Funding to Sleepwear Success

"Being an Entreprenista means also showing up for other women entrepreneurs, lifting them up and sharing our wisdom, our knowledge...that is so important to us."

Most brands don’t last decades. Fewer still do it without outside funding, without shortcuts, and without losing alignment between founders along the way.

Ali Mejia and Mariela Rovito built Eberjey over nearly 30 years by doing exactly that. What started with $20,000 and no formal training in business or design became a globally recognized sleepwear brand—grown steadily through wholesale, reshaped through e-commerce, and sustained through one of the rarest things in business: a long-term partnership that actually works.

Their path wasn’t built on rapid scaling or access to capital. It was built on learning by doing—figuring out manufacturing, sales, distribution, and cash flow in real time. From packing orders themselves in the early days to navigating a near-collapse in 2020, every stage required a different level of decision-making, resilience, and focus.

In this episode of the Entreprenista Podcast, Ali and Mariela share how they built Eberjey from the ground up, why focus became one of their most important growth levers, and how they’ve maintained both control and trust across nearly three decades in business.

You can listen to the podcast here on Spotify and Apple Podcast.

Here are a few moments from the podcast:

The idea started from a personal observation that others didn’t seem to notice:
“I grew up in a household where my grandmother and mother loved beautiful sleepwear from El Salvador originally. And I thought that everybody else grew up the same and had the same passion for pajamas.

When I went to college, everyone was wearing oversized boxer shorts and t-shirts. I was like, guys, we need to look more beautiful in our dorm room.

And that sparked an idea that, isn't there a contemporary brand of beautiful sleepwear in the U.S.? I started researching and saw this huge opportunity that nobody was tapping into.”

Their partnership came together before they fully understood what they were stepping into:
“I always had the entrepreneur bug…but I didn’t know exactly what I was going to do.

So we [Ali and I] met in what was our first, well, what was my first real job out of college. We were working at an advertising agency in Miami, one of the top three agencies. We sort of developed a friendship and Allie started telling me about this idea that she had and...how she always wanted to create beautiful pajamas and intimates and she was working on some samples with a retired pattern maker. She started showing me the samples and I really just fell in love. Everything she was making I wanted to wear, and I knew our friends would too.

We were completely clueless and had no idea what we were getting into, but we said, let’s do this.”

Early growth required showing up in ways that didn’t come naturally:
“It was all about traditional media: Vogue, Elle, Bazaar. We tried really hard to get into those magazines.

We did a lot of trade shows and we met a lot of editors. So we would send them product and really just tried to pitch our products. We were rejected by almost every showroom we applied to until we finally found our partners.

That’s what helped us get into bigger stores like Neiman’s, Saks, and Nordstrom.”

2020 forced a complete shift in how they operated the business:
“All the stores closed, they canceled all the orders, and everyone stopped paying. It was a train wreck. Our cash dried up almost instantly.

We didn’t know if we were going to survive. But then demand shifted: So everyone was home, they wanted pajamas, they wanted loungewear, and we had all the canceled product sitting in our warehouse. So that was the first time that we really started stepping up the marketing machine.

We got scrappy. We went back to the archives and asked, what can we shoot and what can we show and what product do we have in the warehouse?”

That moment reshaped how they thought about growth:
“We really started stepping up the marketing machine and owning our channel.

We realized we could do this ourselves. There was demand, and we needed to meet it.

Fast forward to today, we’re 75% direct-to-consumer and 25% wholesale, but our wholesale volume is still where it was before. It’s a completely different business now.”

One of their biggest lessons came from trying to do too much early on:
“When we were starting, we were trying to grab growth from wherever it came from.

If someone said make it in purple, we did it. If someone asked for petite sizes, we did that too. Swimwear, dresses—we tried everything.

But what happens when you're a small business and you have a small team, you have limited resources. And if you try to do everything, you do nothing right. It's impossible. You have to focus and double down on what you’re really good at.”

What sustained both the business and the partnership over decades:
“It comes from a deep level of trust. I never looked over her shoulder, she never looked over mine.

It just comes from a place of trust and self-awareness and knowing that you're not gonna change each other. And if you don't accept one another authentically and like with love, you're always going to harbor resentment or, you know, and we just never did that.

Business is hard, and having each other has been a blessing. I don’t know that I would have done it alone.”

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You may also like:

• Katya Eckert is transforming women’s sleepwear with A DOMANI to support comfort, dignity, and wellness through life’s transitions
• How Jackie Hutson Turned Postpartum Night Sweats into Piper & Mint's Sleepwear Success‍
• Samantha Gold on Her Elevated Children's Pajama Brand

Exclusive for Entreprenistas

Use code Entreprenista10 at Eberjey for a special discount on your order!

Connect with Ali and Mariela:

• Eberjey
• Ali's Linkedin
• Mariela's Linkedin

Thanks for tuning into this week’s episode of The Entreprenista Podcast - the most fun business meeting for women founders and leaders. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe to the show and leave a review wherever you get your podcasts.

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Updated on: May 1, 2026

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