Antonio Nuño, Fatima Alvarez and Enrique Rodriguez have been friends since they were five years old. As teenagers, they became volunteers helping indigenous communities—first in Mexico, then in other countries—and saw that many of the women there were artisans.
The trio realized that these artists “made very beautiful things in a very sustainable way,” Nuno recalls, and by the time they were 25, the idea for the business had germinated. They envisioned connecting these artists “and their techniques and stories to the supply chains of global companies looking for more sustainable ways to create products.”
So in 2016, someone somewhere The Mexico City-based startup was born. Today, the company works with hundreds of rural artisans in seven of Mexico’s poorest states to apply traditional craftsmanship to clothing and accessories, with the goal of creating “high-quality, fashionable products.”
The startup helps artisan groups organize as cooperatives or small businesses, formalize them, get a bank account, and create community savings accounts. Artisans get paid for each product they make. Someone Somewhere provides the materials, pays 50% upfront and 50% once each product is finished.
viral post
In the first few years, Someone Somewhere signed contracts with some big companies like Ben & Frank (Warby Parker in Latin America) and Rappi. But in 2023, the trio realized they could use AI — specifically Stable Diffusion’s model for converting text to images — to help the company scale even further.
They fed their database of all the different materials and techniques that artisans use into the Stable Diffusion model and began designing AI-assisted concepts that were generated as images of well-known products. The idea was to “show companies what some of their most iconic items could look like if they were made by artisans from different regions.”
They posted the concepts on sites like LinkedIn and Instagram, tagging companies. For example, they created images of Red Bull and Trader Joe’s.
But when they posted their idea for an adidas-branded Mexican national soccer team jersey on LinkedIn in March, their business changed forever. This post The video went viral, eventually garnering over a million views, with people tagging Adidas employees to increase visibility.
In the post, Nuno estimated that each shirt would “generate six months of fair work for more than 3,000 artisans” and “allow more than 15,000 people, including families, to break the cycle of poverty.”
He wrote: “We can imagine what would happen if Mexico’s next jersey was made in collaboration with someone somewhere“The project included hand-embroidered items by different communities in the country. This will be the first time a national team has launched such an initiative, and it is sure to inspire dozens of other countries to replicate it, as handicrafts are the second largest source of employment across Latin America, Africa and Asia.”
Just a day after the post was published, Nuno says, Adidas reached out to him and asked for a meeting. Within weeks, his company had reached an agreement to launch a physical product available to Adidas Club members, as well as Mexican soccer players and content creators.
In total, the marketing campaign reached more than 50 million people and was covered on national television and more than 100 media outlets, according to Nuno. On June 21, the companies announced the new collection of Mexican national team jerseys, hand-embroidered by artisans from the Sierra Norte in Puebla, Mexico.
Each shirt represents more than 11 hours of hand-embroidered work, and symbolically represents the 11 players who proudly represented Mexico at the Copa America.
“With these jerseys, adidas and Someone Somewhere seek to honor the work of Mexican artisans and continue to embrace the country’s cultural heritage, both its roots and the seeds it leaves for future creative generations,” said Pablo Cavallaro, adidas Senior Director of Brand Activation, in a statement. “This collection is inspired by the communities where artisans create each of their pieces, the space they call home.”
The publicly available shirts include Someone Somewhere’s signature detail: a QR code so the user/buyer can learn more about the artisan who helped create it.
“We are now working on more things with Adidas that we will launch next year,” Nuno added.
Artificial intelligence helps create jobs
Nuno attributes his startup’s recent growth to advances in artificial intelligence.
“We’ve found that building products with AI shows companies the potential, and makes it easier for them to move forward,” Nuno told TechCrunch. “That’s allowed us to develop partnerships with a lot of companies, mostly based in the US.”
The strategy works so well that someone somewhere went from designing 10 products a month to designing 5,000 products.
“This has helped us accelerate the pace of work, and is an amazing way to show that AI can take away jobs but also create them, if used creatively. In the past 12 months alone, we have made more than 10 million products with this model,” he added.
Meanwhile, Someone Somewhere’s revenue has grown 36-fold in the past three years, and this year the 75-person team is working with three times as many brands as last year, largely thanks to the use of AI to co-create products.
The stable diffusion model that Someone Somewhere uses emerged last year and allows users to fine-tune the concept images it creates.
“You can control the silhouettes of the products,” Nuno said, adding that this allows his startup to experiment with fabrics and embroideries when developing a concept product.
“Previously, the main hurdle for us was showing companies what we could do together. We had to make physical products, which takes a lot of time. This technology opens doors – they say a picture is worth a thousand words. Now we are able to connect with these big brands and it makes the conversation much faster,” he said.
This has led Someone Somewhere to strike deals like a joint sustainable accessories line with Gator Cases, and with companies like Google, Uber, Stripe, and Amazon (among others) to manufacture merchandise for their employees, events, and marketing campaigns.
QR Codes Win Deal With Apple Supplier
Artificial intelligence is not the only thing responsible for the growth of someone somewhere.
The company also accidentally struck a deal, using those QR codes, to put some of its products in Apple stores around the world and online. The products are made through a partnership with a company called Nimble, which makes sustainable electronics accessories. Someone Somewhere sells its products to Nimble, who in turn sells them to Apple.
Nimble CEO and co-founder Ross Howe is Delta One He was flying business class, and on one flight last year the airline gave him an amenity kit made by Someone Somewhere.
“The items were carefully packed in this canvas bag, which immediately caught my eye,” he recounts. “They were so high quality, and had a QR code to meet the craftsman who made them. By the time I landed, I had learned everything I could about the company behind them, and wanted to explore an opportunity to work with them.”
Nimble already had some ideas for new products including a tote bag, but “just needed the right partner to help bring them to life,” Howe said. “Aside from their obvious design capabilities, Someone Somewhere’s mission and status as a certified B Corp met many of the criteria we look for in a partner.”
So the company reached out to find out more.
Today, its new Apple-exclusive collection includes a series of PowerKnit travel kits with USB-C charging cables. Each includes a travel case made in collaboration with Someone Somewhere. The cases are sold at Apple Stores in 30 countries, including the US and most of Europe.
“After years of searching for potential companies to collaborate on this type of project, we haven’t found anything like what Someone Somewhere is doing,” Howe said. “We are exploring additional projects for future release.”
All of this growth has come after raising just $1.7 million in funding from investors like Dila Capital, GBM Ventures, Kalei Ventures, Louis Jordan, Soldiers Field Angels, and Unreasonable Capital, to date.
Someone Somewhere has been profitable since 2022 and is now raising a new round “to capitalize on the near-term and sustainable buying trends that are clearly growing,” Nuno said.