“Mother asked us to come up with the perfect handbag, so we tried our best, and it is selling very well.”
— Levi Martinez
We are the best smelling store in Portland,” reads a sign gracing the front of a workshop and showroom in Portland’s Old Town district.
“People walk into our store just to check that out,” says Levi Martinez, a 31-year-old member of the family who owns the store. “And they always say, ‘Yeah, it truly smells great.’”
Welcome to Orox, an Oregon maker of fine leather goods with roots in the Mexican state of Oaxaca.
“Oaxaca was one of the last places to be colonized by the Spanish,” Levi Martinez says. “The Oaxacan people have preserved many aspects of their culture, from native languages to food and to crafts like leather work. Tradition is very important to all of us from Oaxaca.”
Levi and his team at Orox create high-quality durable goods that embody the traditional background of the Martinez family. Orox offers a
