Lakeside resident Diana Martin, accomplished clothes designer and founder of Dunes Relaxed Fashion, was among 11 award winners honored by President Enrique Peña Nieto as leaders in Mexico’s export sector.
Recipients of the 2014 Premio Nacional de Exportación were recognized at the closing ceremony of the Congress of Mexican Foreign Trade, held on Friday, September 5 in Mazatlán, Sinaloa. Dunes earned the prize as the nation’s best Small Industrial Export Company.
Based in the Guadalajara metro area for more than four decades, Dunes produces high quality 100-percent cotton fashion wear with a staff of 40 employees. In 2013 the company racked up 17 million pesos in overseas sales to the United States, Canada, Europe and Latin America. The outfit also does lots of business with top-notch stores at Mexico vacation destinations, including Lois Cugini’s Boutique in Ajijic’s shopping district.
Starting out in the back room of a small breakfast joint she was running in Guadalajara’s Pink Zone, Martin created her first fashion line under the brand name Opus.
As business boomed she streamlined production with simplified and trendy concepts for the Dunes label. Now semi-retired as a full-time lakeside resident, she still keeps a strong hand in designing fresh biannual fashion lines.