Today we’d like to introduce you to Angela Zancanaro.
Hi Angela, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today?
I’ve always been an artist and designer, but my path to creating Oceza wasn’t exactly a straight line. I studied art in San Francisco before eventually moving to Baja California Sur, Mexico, where I started a small jewelry business and sold my work at local farmers markets.
Living in Baja completely changed my relationship with the ocean. I spent my free time surfing, snorkeling, exploring the coastline, and eventually got scuba certified during the pandemic after having it on my bucket list for more than a decade. I fell in love with diving almost immediately. Being surrounded by the incredible marine life of the Sea of Cortez made the ocean a huge part of both my life and my creative work.
The idea for Oceza came from a surprisingly simple problem: I couldn’t find a rash guard I actually loved. Most of the options I found felt generic or were covered in the same tropical prints, and I wanted something inspired by the animals I was actually seeing underwater.
With my background in art and design, I started creating my own marine-life patterns and experimenting with the idea of turning them into functional ocean apparel made with recycled fabrics and UPF 50+ sun protection. What started with a few designs slowly grew into Oceza, an ocean-inspired swimwear and apparel brand built around the world I had fallen in love with underwater.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
It honestly has been smoother than I expected in a lot of ways. The biggest challenges in the beginning were the less glamorous parts of building an online business, creating a website that functions well, learning SEO, figuring out digital marketing, and ultimately just getting the word out there.
What surprised me was what happened once the dive community started discovering the brand, It felt like wildfire. Divers are incredibly passionate about the ocean and the animals they encounter, and I think Oceza gave people a way to wear that part of their identity.
I also learned how powerful it can be to really narrow down your niche. Instead of trying to make something that appealed to everyone, I was creating for one very specific community that I was already a part of and understood personally. Once I found those people, the growth started happening much more organically.
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
My work has always been rooted in art & creativity, but over the years it has evolved into this really interesting combination of art, design, entrepreneurship, photography, travel, and scuba diving.
I’m an artist and designer by background, and today I spend most of my time designing prints for and running Oceza, but I’m also a PADI scuba instructor and increasingly working in ocean and wildlife photography and content creation. What I love is that none of those things really feel separate anymore. Diving and traveling give me experiences and inspiration, photography gives me another way to document them, and my art and design background lets me turn those experiences into something tangible.
Is there something surprising that you feel even people who know you might not know about?
Something people might not know about me is that I’m a very hands-on, DIY kind of person. Before Oceza, I was actually a jewelry designer and spent years making things by hand at my jewelry bench.
I really love learning how things are made, and if something interests me, my instinct is usually to figure out how to do it myself. One summer I randomly decided I wanted to build a dining table, so I bought teak wood, learned what I needed to learn, and built one.
I think that’s probably one of the biggest threads connecting everything I do: I’m endlessly curious, I love working with my hands, and I’m rarely afraid to try something just because I don’t already know how to do it.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.ocezaswim.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/oceza.swim/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Oceza/
- Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@oceza.swim
