Leonisa Family

The Urrea brothers of Guatape

The founders of Leonisa, Colombia's best-known lingerie and shapewear maker, were four brothers: Luis Enrique, Marco Aurelio, Joaquin Eduardo and Julio Ernesto Urrea Urrea. They came from Guatape, a small town in the department of Antioquia, and they registered Leonisa in Medellin on November 20, 1956. Joaquin Urrea is usually named as the leading figure among them.

A store called El Volga

The brothers did not start in underwear. In 1950 they moved to Armenia, the coffee town in what was then the Viejo Caldas region, to profit from a coffee boom, and there they opened their first business, a store called El Volga. It did well at first and then declined as the region's economy worsened, and the family moved back to Antioquia.

Two machines in Medellin

Leonisa began small. In Medellin the brothers bought a serger and a flat-bed sewing machine and produced shirts, slips and petticoats. The company name is an acronym of Lencerias Nacionales de Textiles S.A., which states the ambition plainly: a national lingerie manufacturer.

The Diamond Point bra

The product that the company credits with its early position was the Diamond Point bra, and Leonisa describes itself as one of the pioneers of women's intimate apparel in South America. Medellin was by then the center of the Colombian textile industry, which gave a small workshop access to mills and trained sewers.

Costa Rica and the export years

The brothers' company crossed its first border in 1965 with a manufacturing plant in Costa Rica. Europe followed in 1989, with sales in Spain, the United Kingdom, Germany, France and Italy. In 1993 it launched the Magic Up bra, a push-up bra promoted as using new technology, along with a catalog sales channel, and in 2009 an online store for the United States and Canada.

What the company is now

Leonisa reported revenue of about 812 billion Colombian pesos in 2023 and employs about 10,000 people. It has operations in a dozen countries, including the United States, Spain, Mexico, Chile, Peru, Ecuador, Guatemala, Panama, Costa Rica, Portugal and Puerto Rico, and says it sells to more than 120. Its shapewear lines, including the smart-fabric range introduced in 2012, are the part of the business best known outside Latin America. The four founders' surname is not on the label, but the company still works from Medellin, where they started with two sewing machines.

Last updated October 7, 2026