Pirma Brand Guidelines: From Pirma-Brasil Trainers to Liga MX Kits in Guanajuato

A shoemaking town and a borrowed country name.

Pirma began in San Francisco del Rincón, a shoemaking town in Guanajuato that locals call San Pancho. La Silla Rota reported in February 2025 that in 1987 a young Rafael León Meléndez began making casual “top sailer” shoes in a small factory in the town’s Cuauhtémoc district, and that three years later he switched from casual shoes to sports shoes. Spanish Wikipedia describes the 1987 start as the production of shoe soles, through a company called Caribean.

The sports shoes went out under the name Pirma-Brasil. La Silla Rota noted that San Francisco del Rincón is known as “the capital of the trainer,” and reported that the shoes spread from local shops and street markets to the rest of the country. When León Meléndez came to register the brand, the paper said, he had two worries: that a country’s name could not be registered as a mark, and that buyers might think the shoes were not Mexican. The brand was registered simply as Pirma, and Spanish Wikipedia today describes the company as a maker and distributor of sports clothing and footwear with its headquarters in San Francisco del Rincón. English and Spanish Wikipedia both give 1999 as the year the word Brasil was dropped.

The business grew as a group of linked companies. Spanish Wikipedia lists Maquiladora de Calzado Caribean, set up in 1990 to make sports shoes; Manufacturera San Javier, created in 1992 to give administrative support to the clothing and footwear companies; and Maquiladora San Javier, from 1994, which also makes shoes. It says Manufacturera San Javier now makes urban and basketball shoes, while Maquiladora de Calzado Caribean makes running and football boots.

Club León, Puebla and Cruz Azul.

Football made the name widely known. According to La Silla Rota, Pirma’s first club kit was for Club León in 2004; after the club used other suppliers for a time, Pirma dressed León again from 2009 to 2021, a period that included the club’s promotion to the top division and its Apertura 2013 title. The paper lists other clubs Pirma has supplied, including Mazatlán, Puebla, Necaxa and San Luis, and reported that Cruz Azul joined Pirma in 2023; it was still dressing Cruz Azul when that report appeared in February 2025.

In a February 2015 column in Merca2.0, the marketing magazine described how Adidas, Nike and Puma had taken over most Liga MX kit deals from Mexican makers such as Atlética and Garcis, and named Pirma as the one Mexican brand still holding a position among the league’s kit suppliers. The column put the change down to the foreign brands’ new designs and fabrics, more emotional marketing, sponsorship of individual players and a steady flow of second and third kits each season. Spanish Wikipedia’s list of sponsored teams goes beyond Mexico, naming clubs in Brazil, Chile, El Salvador and Honduras, among them Everton de Viña del Mar.

The range covers more than football. English Wikipedia lists urban clothing for men and women, including jackets, T-shirts and shorts, team uniforms, athletic shoes, goalkeeper gloves and footballs, for sports including football, basketball, boxing, running and tennis. It also says that in 2018 Pirma agreed with Grupo Televisa to clothe about 200 members of the broadcaster’s sports staff who travelled to Russia to cover that year’s World Cup.

Running is a newer stage for the brand. In May 2026 TV4 Noticias reported the launch in León of the first PIRMA 21K, a road race with 10K and 5K distances, presented at the Plaza Mayor shopping centre with an official shirt in blue and green; entries could be made online or at participating Pirma stores.

Catalogues, shoemaking and kits.

Mexican fashion and footwear brands reach their customers in several different ways, and their identities follow from that choice. Some sell mainly through printed and digital catalogues carried by networks of independent sellers; others sell through chains of their own stores, department-store counters or, in a few cases, museum and hotel shops. A catalogue brand’s pages, a sportswear maker’s team kits and a silk house’s scarf prints each do the work that a shop window does elsewhere.

León, in the state of Guanajuato, is the centre of much of the footwear trade. Business titles such as Alto Nivel and El CEO describe the city as home to shoe and sportswear makers including Andrea, Charly and Pirma, and to many small and medium producers of leather goods. Several companies started elsewhere and moved there: Andrea began in Mexico City in 1973 and moved its making to a León factory in 1981, according to Alto Nivel.

Ownership is usually private, and often in the hands of founders or families. Company pages and the business press describe founders, holding companies and store networks in different levels of detail, and branch, affiliate and outlet counts change from year to year, so each figure in these guides carries the date of the source that gave it. Where a brand’s own website is the only source for a statement, the guide says so.

This guide sets out what can be checked about each brand: who founded it and when, who owns it, where its products are made as far as dated sources say, and how it presents itself through catalogues, kits, prints and stores. The colours and typefaces shown are an unofficial interpretation, not the brands’ own.

Still run by its founder, still made in Guanajuato.

Pirma has stayed with its founder. TV4 Noticias named Rafael León Meléndez as Pirma’s director general when he attended the launch of the 21K race in May 2026, and La Silla Rota described him in February 2025 as the owner of the company that grew from the factory he started in 1987.

Much of the making remains in Guanajuato. La Silla Rota reported in February 2025 that Pirma had three factories, two in San Francisco del Rincón and one in León, employing more than 3,000 people from the state. Spanish Wikipedia adds that the company’s garments and some accessories are made in Asian countries, naming Bangladesh, Pakistan, China and Vietnam. Spanish Wikipedia also says the company operates in Mexico, the United States, Canada, Brazil, Panama, Costa Rica and El Salvador.

The name itself carries the brand’s history. Pirma began as a trainer maker in San Francisco del Rincón, sold its sports shoes as Pirma-Brasil through the 1990s, and, according to La Silla Rota, registered the shorter name partly so that buyers would not take the shoes for foreign ones. The paper credits the Liga MX deals with spreading the name further, and its account runs from a single factory in the Cuauhtémoc district to club shirts worn in the top division and a running event carrying the Pirma name in León.

For a design guide, Pirma shows how a regional shoemaker can build a national sports brand through team kits. Compare Charly, another Guanajuato football kit maker, and Cuadra, a León boot maker. For this guide we use a kit blue, ink and pitch green with a condensed sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Pirma’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.