About Us
OUR STORY
Understated Rebellion
Sangre de Mar is a Mexican-Canadian leather house. The pieces are designed in New Westminster, British Columbia, handcrafted in Mexico, and — for selected hand-finished editions — finished one piece at a time by the founder at his studio bench in Canada.
The brand was born from the dialogue between two Pacific coasts: the warm, raw beauty of Mexico's south — Zipolite, Mazunte, Puerto Vallarta — and the cooler, modern restraint of the Pacific Northwest. Mexican heat meets British Columbia stillness. The result is a collection of objects that are quiet on the surface and defiant in the detail: full-grain pebbled leather, hand-pressed brass studs, hair-on-hide, hand-finished tassels, unlined interiors that signal construction over decoration.
Sangre de Mar makes three kinds of pieces.
La Casa · Curated. The ready-now collection. Foundational silhouettes — totes, weekenders, crossbodies — handcrafted in Mexico to the same standards as every Sangre de Mar piece.
La Mano · Hand-Finished. Pieces that begin in Mexico and are finished in Canada — studs hand-pressed, edges hand-burnished, tassels hand-stitched. No two are identical. Each carries a slight variation that is the mark of the hand.
La Firma · Original. Limited-edition designs originated by the house, made in small batches. Pieces meant to be the most personal object you own.
Across all three tiers, we make fewer, better things — built to soften, patina, and outlast a decade of daily use.
THE FOUNDER
Sangre de Mar was founded by Alejandro Miramontes, a Mexican-Canadian textile designer and fractional CMO whose twenty-year career has been spent inside some of the most demanding marketing rooms in the world.
Born in Guadalajara, raised on the Pacific coast of Puerto Vallarta, and shaped by Mexico City's visual culture, Alejandro trained in textile design and spent his first decade inside global fashion — Zara, Grupo Julio, and H&M, where he was hired as the first marketing manager for H&M Mexico and employee number seven for H&M across Latin America. The Santa Fe store's opening drew 2,000 people to the door; within five years, the operation had captured 20% of Mexico's fast-fashion market share.
He moved west to Vancouver to take on marketing roles at Hootsuite — where he supported the company's first Latin American regional office — and at Axon, the publicly traded public safety technology company, leading international marketing for Canada and Latin America.
Alongside Sangre de Mar, Alejandro runs a fractional CMO practice (fractionalcmonow.com) serving three to four clients at a time across construction, industrial technology, B2B SaaS, financial services, and consumer retail. Operates across Canada, the United States, and Latin America.
Sangre de Mar is his brand, built from scratch with his own capital and his own name — the discipline he had spent twenty years recommending to other founders, applied to himself.
The studio is in New Westminster. The hands are in Mexico and Vancouver. The bag is signed.
THE CRAFT
Sangre de Mar pieces are made in small batches by a leather workshop in Mexico that has worked with the house since the brand began. We use full-grain leather — the strongest, longest-wearing grade — sourced from tanneries we know by name.
Selected pieces are then sent to Vancouver, where Alejandro hand-finishes them at his studio bench: setting brass studs one at a time, burnishing edges, and hand-stitching tassels. This is the La Mano tier. You can see the hand in the leather.
Our construction signals matter as much as our materials. Bags are typically unlined — the natural reverse of the full-grain hide replaces the fabric lining that mass-market construction uses to hide thinner materials. Organization is solved by detached leather pouches sold with the bag, not by zippers and dividers built into the interior. Both choices are slower, more expensive, and more honest.
We don't make seasonal collections. We don't chase trends. We make pieces designed to be worn, repaired, and kept — the kind of objects that get better the longer they are with you.