Mexican Startup Uses AI to Land Major Adidas Contract and Empower Artisans
Someone Somewhere leverages AI-generated images to connect traditional Mexican artisans with global supply chains, resulting in a viral campaign and a major partnership with Adidas.
Childhood friends Antonio Nuño, Fatima Alvarez, and Enrique Rodriguez found a way to connect indigenous Mexican artisans with global companies when they launch Someone Somewhere in 2016. The Mexico City-based startup works with hundreds of rural artisans across seven of Mexico's poorest states to apply traditional handcraft techniques to modern clothing and accessories. By helping these artisans form cooperatives and providing upfront payments for materials, the company creates a sustainable bridge between local craftsmanship and international markets.
In 2023, the founders discover a powerful new tool to scale their operations by integrating Stable Diffusion's text-to-image AI model into their design process. They feed their database of traditional materials and techniques into the AI to generate realistic concepts showing how iconic products from major brands look when crafted by Mexican artisans. The team shares these AI-generated designs on LinkedIn and directly tags the featured companies to grab their attention.
This strategy leads to massive success when they post an AI-rendered image of an Adidas-branded Mexican National Team soccer jersey in March. The post goes incredibly viral, amassing over 1 million views and prompting users to tag Adidas employees, which ultimately results in a major contract for the startup. This breakthrough demonstrates how artificial intelligence serves as a catalyst for social impact by visually proving to large corporations the value of partnering with rural artisan communities.