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 were artisans.

The trio came to realize that these artists “made very beautiful things in a very sustainable way,” Nuño recalls, and by the time they were 25, the idea for a business had germinated. They imagined connecting these artists, “their techniques and their stories with the supply chains of global companies looking for more sustainable ways to create products.”

So in 2016, Someone Somewhere was born. Today the Mexico City-based startup works with hundreds of rural artisans in seven of Mexico’s poorest states to apply traditional handcrafts on clothing and accessories, with the mission of creating “quality, on-trend products.”

The startup helps artisan groups organize as cooperatives or small businesses, formalize, access a bank account, and build communitary savings accounts. The artisans are paid for each product they make. Someone Somewhere supplies the materials, and pays 50% in advance and 50% once they finish each product.

A viral post

In its first few years, Someone Somewhere landed contracts with some larger companies such as Ben & Frank (the Warby Parker of Latin America) and Rappi. But in 2023, the trio realized they could use AI -- particularly Stable Diffusion’s text to images model -- to help the company scale even further.

They fed their databases of all the various materials and techniques the artisans used into Stable Diffusion’s model and began designing AI-assisted concepts, produced as images, of well-known products. The idea was to “show companies how some of their most iconic items could look if they were made with artisans from different regions.”

They posted the concepts on sites like LinkedIn, tagging the companies. For example, they created images for Red Bull and Trader Joe’s.

But it was when they posted their concept of an adidas-branded Mexican National Team soccer jersey on LinkedIn in March that changed their business forever. That post went viral, ultimately receiving more than 1 million views, with people tagging adidas employees for visibility.

In the post, Nuño 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, and incorporated elements hand-embroidered by various communities in the country. It would be the first time that a national team launches such an initiative, and it would undoubtedly inspire dozens of other countries to replicate it since crafts are the second largest source of employment in all of Latin America, Africa and Asia.”

Just one day after the post went up, Nuño says that adidas reached out and asked for a meeting. Within weeks, his company had an agreement to launch a physical product made available to adiClub members, as well as to Mexican soccer players and content creators.

All told, the marketing post reached more than 50 million people, and was covered on national TV and over 100 media outlets, according to Nuño. On June 21, the companies announced the new collection of Mexican National Team jerseys, hand-embroidered by women artisans from the Sierra Norte of Puebla, Mexico.

Each shirt represented more than 11 hours of hand-embroidery work, symbolically representing the 11 players who proudly represented Mexico in the Copa América.

"Through these jerseys, both adidas and Someone Somewhere seek to honor the work of Mexican artisans and continue embracing the cultural heritage of the country, both its roots and the seeds it leaves for future creative generations,” said Pablo Cavallaro, senior director, Brand Activation at adidas, in a statement. “This collection is inspired by the communities where the artisans create each of their pieces, the space they call 'home'.”

The shirts available to the public include Someone Somewhere’s signature detail: a QR code so that the user/purchaser can learn more about the artisan who helped create it.

“Now we are working on more things with adidas that we will launch next year,” Nuño said.

AI helps create jobs

Nuño credits advances in AI for his startup’s recent growth.

“We found that creating products with AI shows companies the potential so it’s easier to move forward,” Nuño told TechCrunch. “It has allowed us to develop partnerships with a lot of companies, based in the U.S. mostly,”

The strategy is working so well that Someone Somewhere went from designing 10 products a month to 5,000.

“This has helped us accelerate, and it’s an amazing way of showing that AI can take away jobs but also create them, if used creatively,” he added. “Just in the last 12 months alone, we've made more than 10 million products with this model.”

Meanwhile, Someone Somewhere’s revenue has grown 36x in the last three years. This year, the 75-person team is working with triple the number of brands than it did last year, in large part thanks to the use of AI to co-create products.

The Stable Diffusion model that Someone Somewhere is using came out last year and allows users to fine-tune the concept images it creates.

“You can control the silhouettes of products,” Nuño said, adding that this allows his startup to experiment with fabrics and embroideries when developing a concept product.

“Before our main bottleneck was showing companies the potential of what we could do together. We had to make physical products, which takes a lot of time. This technology opens doors -- they say an image is more than a thousand words. Now we’re able to connect with these big brands and that makes the conversation go way faster,” he said.

That’s led Someone Somewhere to deals like a co-branded sustainable accessories line with Gator Cases, and with companies such as Google, Uber, Stripe and Amazon (among others) to make merchandise for their employees, events and marketing campaigns.

QR codes land a deal with an Apple supplier

AI is not the only thing responsible for Someone Somewhere’s growth.

The company also accidentally landed a deal, through its use of those QR codes, that placed some of its products in Apple stores worldwide and online. The products are made through a partnership with a company called Nimble, which makes sustainable electronic accessories. Someone Somewhere sells its products to Nimble, which in turn sells it to Apple.

Nimble CEO and co-founder Ross Howe is a Delta One business class customer, and on a flight last year the airline gave him an amenity kit made by Someone Somewhere.

“The items were neatly packed in this fabric bag, which immediately caught my attention,” he recounts. “It was very high-quality, and had a QR code to meet the artisan who made it. By the time the plane landed, I learned everything I could about the company behind it, and wanted to explore an opportunity to work with them.”

Nimble already had some concepts for new products that included a carrying case but “just needed the right partner to help create it,” Howe said. “Aside from their apparent design capabilities, Someone Somewhere's mission and status as a fellow Certified B Corp checked so many boxes for what we look for in a partner.”

So the company reached out to learn more.

Today, its new Apple-exclusive collection features a series of PowerKnit Travel Kits with USB-C charging cables. Each includes a travel case made in collaboration with Someone Somewhere. The pouches are being sold in Apple stores in 30 countries, including the U.S. and most of Europe.

“After years of researching potential companies to collaborate on this type of project, we hadn't come across anything quite like what Someone Somewhere is doing,” Howe said. “We are exploring additional projects for potential future release.”

All of this growth has come after raising a total of just $1.7 million in funding from investors such as Impact Ventures PSM, Dila Capital, GBM Ventures, Kalei Ventures, Louis Jordan, Soldiers Field Angels, and Unreasonable Capital, so far.

Someone Somewhere has been profitable since 2022, and is in the process of raising a new round “to take advantage of the nearshoring and sustainable procurement trends that are clearly growing,” Nuño said.

This article originally appeared on TechCrunch at https://techcrunch.com/2024/09/07/how-a-viral-ai-image-catapulted-a-mexican-startup-to-a-major-adidas-contract/