The Cali Factory That Beat Asia to Make Colombia’s World Cup Shirt

Metropole · Colombia · Business of Sport

The Colombia World Cup shirt that Luis Díaz and James Rodríguez are wearing in North America was not stitched in Asia or Europe — it was made in Cali, by a Colombian firm that beat the world’s biggest factories to the job.

Most fans assume their national shirt comes from a vast plant in Vietnam or China. For Colombia, that stopped being true years ago.

Since the 2018 World Cup, the official Adidas kit worn by the Colombian team has been made by Supertex, a textile company based in Cali, the country’s third industrial city. The shirts are designed, printed and finished on Colombian soil.

The scale of this tournament’s job is large. Company president Eduardo Herrera says Supertex made about 900,000 Colombia shirts for the current cycle, split between roughly 600,000 yellow home jerseys and close to 300,000 blue away ones.

The work starts long before kickoff. Production for this World Cup ran from June 2025 to March 2026, because the volumes are too big to leave late.

How the Colombia World Cup shirt came home

Winning the contract took a decade. The Colombia shirt was made in Vietnam until 2014, and Supertex spent years trying to convince Adidas that local hands could match Asian factories on price, quality and deadlines.

The breakthrough came before the 2018 World Cup in Russia. The deciding factor was a technical one: sublimation, the printing process that fixes a team’s colours and crest into the fabric.

On that step, Herrera says, Adidas rates Colombia the best in the world, ahead of the Asian suppliers that dominate everything else. It is a rare case of a Latin American manufacturer winning work on quality rather than cheap labour.

The win opened doors across the region. Supertex now makes kits for Argentina, Peru and Chile too, which means the same Cali plant helps dress Lionel Messi’s side as well as Colombia’s.

The roots run deep into Colombian sport. The firm was founded in the 1980s by Jorge Herrera, a businessman who also led the country’s Olympic Committee, and it made shirts for Germany’s national team and Bayern Munich long before it won the Colombia job.

Today it works for most of the big sportswear names, from Adidas and Nike to Under Armour and Patagonia. The Colombia shirt sits at the centre of a much larger export business run from the Valle del Cauca region.

The economics behind the jersey

The gap between cost and price is striking. A shirt that sells for about 400,000 to 500,000 pesos, roughly 117 to 147 dollars, costs Supertex only around an eighth of that to make.

Herrera says most of the retail price reflects what Adidas spends sponsoring the team and the brand, not the stitching. The fabric itself comes from Protela, another Colombian firm, based in Bogotá.

The business also carries a social weight. The Cali factory employs about 1,100 people, many of them women supporting families on their own, in a region Herrera says produces more but still struggles to create formal jobs.

Two clouds sit over the success. Counterfeiting is rampant, with fakes now good enough that ordinary buyers cannot tell them apart, and Herrera warns that sharply rising wage costs could erode the edge that won the work from Asia in the first place.

The company is not standing still. It is opening a plant in Guatemala in the second half of 2026 and starting a project for Nike to make club kits in Colombia, Mexico and Brazil.

More: Colombia news in English, every day from The Rio Times.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who makes the Colombia World Cup shirt?

The official Adidas kit is made by Supertex, a textile company in Cali, Colombia. It has produced the national team’s shirts since the 2018 World Cup, after winning the work from factories in Vietnam.

How many shirts did Supertex make for this World Cup?

It produced about 900,000 Colombia shirts for the current cycle, roughly 600,000 yellow home jerseys and close to 300,000 blue away ones. The company makes around 1.5 million units a year in total.

Why is the Colombia World Cup shirt made in Cali, not Asia?

Supertex won the contract on quality, not cheap labour, excelling at sublimation, the printing process Adidas rates as the best in the world. That technical edge let a Colombian firm take work that Asian factories usually dominate.

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