Antonio Nuño, Fatima Alvarez, and Enrique Rodriguez have been pals since they had been 5 years previous. As youngsters, they grew to become volunteers serving to indigenous communities — first in Mexico, then in different nations — and noticed that most of the ladies had been artisans.
The trio got here to understand that these artists “made very lovely issues in a really sustainable means,” Nuño recollects, and by the point they had been 25, the thought for a enterprise had germinated. They imagined connecting these artists, “their methods and their tales with the provision chains of worldwide corporations on the lookout for extra sustainable methods to create merchandise.”
So in 2016, Someone Somewhere was born. Today the Mexico City-based startup works with a whole lot of rural artisans in seven of Mexico’s poorest states to use conventional handcrafts on clothes and accessories, with the mission of making “high quality, on-trend merchandise.”
The startup helps artisan teams set up as cooperatives or small companies, formalize, entry a checking account, and construct communitary financial savings accounts. The artisans are paid for every product they make. Someone Somewhere provides the supplies, and pays 50% prematurely and 50% as soon as they end every product.
A viral publish
In its first few years, Someone Somewhere landed contracts with some bigger corporations reminiscent of Ben & Frank (the Warby Parker of Latin America) and Rappi. But in 2023, the trio realized they may use AI — notably Stable Diffusion’s textual content to pictures mannequin — to assist the corporate scale even additional.
They fed their databases of all the assorted supplies and methods the artisans used into Stable Diffusion’s mannequin and started designing AI-assisted ideas, produced as photos, of well-known merchandise. The concept was to “present corporations how a few of their most iconic gadgets might look in the event that they had been made with artisans from totally different areas.”
They posted the ideas on websites like LinkedIn and Instagram, tagging the businesses. For instance, they created photos for Red Bull and Trader Joe’s.
But it was once they posted their idea of an adidas-branded Mexican National Team soccer jersey on LinkedIn in March that modified their enterprise perpetually. That publish went viral, finally receiving greater than 1 million views, with individuals tagging adidas staff for visibility.
In the publish, Nuño estimated that every shirt would “generate six months of honest work for greater than 3,000 artisans” and “enable greater than 15,000 individuals, together with households, to interrupt the cycle of poverty.”
He wrote: “We can think about what would occur if Mexico’s subsequent jersey was made in collaboration with Someone Somewhere, and included components hand-embroidered by varied communities within the nation. It could be the primary time {that a} nationwide group launches such an initiative, and it could undoubtedly encourage dozens of different nations to duplicate it since crafts are the second largest supply of employment in all of Latin America, Africa and Asia.”
Just someday after the publish went up, Nuño says that adidas reached out and requested for a gathering. Within weeks, his firm had an settlement to launch a bodily product made accessible to adiClub members, in addition to to Mexican soccer gamers and content material creators.
All advised, the advertising publish reached greater than 50 million individuals, and was coated on nationwide TV and over 100 media shops, in keeping with Nuño. On June 21, the businesses introduced the brand new assortment of Mexican National Team jerseys, hand-embroidered by ladies artisans from the Sierra Norte of Puebla, Mexico.
Each shirt represented greater than 11 hours of hand-embroidery work, symbolically representing the 11 gamers who proudly represented Mexico within the Copa América.
“Through these jerseys, each adidas and Someone Somewhere search to honor the work of Mexican artisans and proceed embracing the cultural heritage of the nation, each its roots and the seeds it leaves for future artistic generations,” stated Pablo Cavallaro, senior director, Brand Activation at adidas, in a press release. “This assortment is impressed by the communities the place the artisans create every of their items, the area they name ‘residence’.”
The shirts accessible to the general public embody Someone Somewhere’s signature element: a QR code in order that the consumer/purchaser can be taught extra concerning the artisan who helped create it.
“Now we’re engaged on extra issues with adidas that we’ll launch subsequent yr,” Nuño stated.
AI helps create jobs
Nuño credit advances in AI for his startup’s latest development.
“We discovered that creating merchandise with AI reveals corporations the potential so it’s simpler to maneuver ahead,” Nuño advised TechCrunch. “It has allowed us to develop partnerships with lots of corporations, primarily based within the U.S. principally,”
The technique is working so properly that Someone Somewhere went from designing 10 merchandise a month to five,000.
“This has helped us speed up, and it’s an incredible means of displaying that AI can take away jobs but in addition create them, if used creatively,” he added. “Just within the final 12 months alone, we’ve made greater than 10 million merchandise with this mannequin.”
Meanwhile, Someone Somewhere’s income has grown 36x within the final three years. This yr, the 75-person group is working with triple the variety of manufacturers than it did final yr, largely because of the usage of AI to co-create merchandise.
The Stable Diffusion mannequin that Someone Somewhere is utilizing got here out final yr and permits customers to fine-tune the idea photos it creates.
“You can management the silhouettes of merchandise,” Nuño stated, including that this enables his startup to experiment with materials and embroideries when growing an idea product.
“Before our essential bottleneck was displaying corporations the potential of what we might do collectively. We needed to make bodily merchandise, which takes lots of time. This know-how opens doorways — they are saying a picture is greater than a thousand phrases. Now we’re in a position to join with these huge manufacturers and that makes the dialog go means sooner,” he stated.
That’s led Someone Somewhere to offers like a co-branded sustainable equipment line with Gator Cases, and with corporations reminiscent of Google, Uber, Stripe and Amazon (amongst others) to make merchandise for his or her staff, occasions and advertising campaigns.
QR codes land a take care of an Apple provider
AI will not be the one factor answerable for Someone Somewhere’s development.
The firm additionally by accident landed a deal, by means of its use of these QR codes, that positioned a few of its merchandise in Apple shops worldwide and on-line. The merchandise are made by means of a partnership with an organization referred to as Nimble, which makes sustainable digital equipment. Someone Somewhere sells its merchandise to Nimble, which in flip sells it to Apple.
Nimble CEO and co-founder Ross Howe is a Delta One enterprise class buyer, and on a flight final yr the airline gave him an amenity package made by Someone Somewhere.
“The gadgets had been neatly packed on this cloth bag, which instantly caught my consideration,” he recounts. “It was very high-quality, and had a QR code to fulfill the artisan who made it. By the time the airplane landed, I realized every thing I might concerning the firm behind it, and needed to discover a possibility to work with them.”
Nimble already had some ideas for brand new merchandise that included a carrying case however “simply wanted the appropriate accomplice to assist create it,” Howe stated. “Aside from their obvious design capabilities, Someone Somewhere’s mission and standing as a fellow Certified B Corp checked so many packing containers for what we search for in a accomplice.”
So the corporate reached out to be taught extra.
Today, its new Apple-exclusive assortment encompasses a collection of PowerKnit Travel Kits with USB-C charging cables. Each features a journey case made in collaboration with Someone Somewhere. The pouches are being offered in Apple shops in 30 nations, together with the U.S. and most of Europe.
“After years of researching potential corporations to collaborate on such a mission, we hadn’t come throughout something fairly like what Someone Somewhere is doing,” Howe stated. “We are exploring extra initiatives for potential future launch.”
All of this development has come after elevating a complete of simply $1.7 million in funding from traders reminiscent of Dila Capital, GBM Ventures, Kalei Ventures, Louis Jordan, Soldiers Field Angels, and Unreasonable Capital, thus far.
Someone Somewhere has been worthwhile since 2022, and is within the means of elevating a brand new spherical “to benefit from the nearshoring and sustainable procurement developments which are clearly rising,” Nuño stated.
