FROM TWO SEWING MACHINES IN PUNO TO A WORKSHOP IN LIMA

In 1995, Octavio Paquita opened a garment workshop in Puno, 3,800 meters above sea level, by Lake Titicaca. Two straight-stitch machines and nothing else. The workshop was called Bamatex, and for years it sewed for the local market before it had a sportswear brand's name.

In 1999 Bama made the kit for Club Alfonso Ugarte de Puno — the first documented proof that the workshop was already serving an institutional client, not just one-off orders. That team photo is still, thirty years later, the most honest proof that Bama has been outfitting institutions for decades.

The workshop moved from Puno to Lima, where it still operates today: cutting, sewing and finishing under the same roof. Over time the brand became Bama Sportswear and added the workwear, outdoor and lifestyle lines to the original catalog.

Thirty-one years after those two straight-stitch machines, the workshop is still the same kind of business: people sewing garments that other people will wear every day. What changed was the scale — from a family workshop at altitude to Bama's own plant in Lima, built to produce by volume with a 30-unit MOQ per model.