Uniroca, 50 years of safety and comfort for workers

Quality, innovation and state-of-the-art technology have kept this family business as the leader in the industrial equipment market in the country. In a small house in Barrio Triste, Luis Guillermo and his brother Antonio Roldan Molina created a clothing micro-business in 1971, Uniformes Industriales Ltda., which sought to provide industrial clothing to large regional entities. His idea was to supply the organizations' need for uniforms.

“My brother was an executive at Fabricato and I was the controller of the Corona organization and one day I had to find out why the workers' uniforms were not arriving and I heard when the purchasing manager asked: why so many days of non-compliance? if I didn't ask the price or anything, what a bad service! And I considered that enough market research to start a uniform business and it was then that we decided with my brother to set up the factory,” says Luis Guillermo Roldán, founder of Uniroca.

Their productive structure is one of the differentiating factors that have consolidated them as a benchmark over the years. In 1978 they already had more than 70 workers, and four years later they had bought the industrial footwear producer Quin Lop, which made them the first company in the country to directly produce footwear and clothing for industries.

“Our entry into the market changed the panorama in this area, before it was done in a very traditional way. We complement the line, and today we are still the only company that has both lines of uniforms and safety footwear for industrial equipment”, says Darío Suárez Ángel, general manager of Uniroca.

The American market was conquered in the 90s, when alliances with Polo Ralph Lauren and Levi's began. Medellín began to position itself as the city of clothing and thanks to this they improved their technique, machinery and investment. In 2000 they decided to unite the two companies, clothing and footwear, into a single unit and consolidated as Uniroca, a leading company in industrial equipment and at 50 years of age they maintain this position with the creation of more than 450 direct jobs and 1,100 indirect jobs.