Someone Somewhere's story shows how failure can be the beginning of great transformations and learning in times of crisis.
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This story was first seen in our Speakers Stories newsletter, where each month we share one of the best failure stories from our global community. Get these stories in your inbox before anyone else, subscribe to our newsletter here.
Fátima Álvarez, Co-Founder of Someone Somewhere, a sustainable brand of clothing, backpacks and accessories. She leads the Social Impact area and together with her team, opens market opportunities to increase demand, which in turn increases the impact on the artisan communities they work with.
Fatima: For me, failure is inevitable when we try to do challenging things or solve complex problems. Every step we take is accompanied by mistakes, but above all by learning that strengthens us.
Failure is an experience that has helped me to understand my capabilities, those of my team, and to understand what to avoid as we continue to build the business. I like to think that by embracing these failures, we can become more vulnerable while building confidence.
Fatima: Together with my partners Antonio Nuño and Enrique Rodriguez, we started a project 13 years ago, where our main mission was to combat a current problem in México and in the world: extreme poverty.
After years of traveling to a community in the Sierra Norte de Puebla at México, we realized the potential that craftsmanship had in that and many other communities, so we decided to venture out, and devise a business that would bring this art together with the demand out there.
Years later we brought more people to the team and created the brand "Someone Somewhere", which is so called, because each of our products is signed by the Artisan Creator and the place he calls home. We want to generate fair and consistent jobs, while giving visibility to the entire value chain.
Fatima: In 2020, after a long period of capital raising we were in the final stretch to open our market in the United States, we prepared everything to start our E-commerce and open a couple of physical stores.
We sent inventory and hired a PR agency. It was one of our biggest bets to open a market, scale and grow as a business, we knew the challenge was great as we were going from selling in a market we knew (the Mexican market) to one full of opportunities and challenges at the same time (the North American market).
Although of course we had no idea that a pandemic would come and change the game.
As we understood the potential chaos that the pandemic would bring, reading the news, feeling questioned about the strategy of opening the US market, we realized that this would be a failure . Eventually this new global emergency forced us to close the retail channel overnight and we were left without the ability to launch our brand strongly, and one day we heard on the news that the non-essential stores at México would have to close their doors indefinitely. My partners and I knew that the dream we had been building for more than ten years, on which the work of more than 300 artisans depended, was in danger of ending.
Our concern was not only to deal with the drop in sales but at the same time we had to find a way to keep producing to maintain income for our team and the communities we work with.
Fatima: When we realized that we had to pause the launch, we were overcome with a huge ambiguity, where all areas collapsed, not knowing what would happen in the following months and how we would sell the inventory we had staked everything on at the time.
It was complicated to think about the jobs that would potentially stop in the communities, in the maquilas and in the office. It weighed heavily on me to think of the impact this would have and above all the ambiguity of time.
We were building a company with the promise of providing fair and steady work opportunities to people who needed it, and when we were finally getting there, everything was put on hold indefinitely.
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These narratives not only provide valuable tools for dealing with failure, but also motivate and inspire entire teams to reach their full potential even in difficult times.
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Back to Fatima...
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Fatima: We were able to understand the opportunity in B2B sales, leverage internal resources and know how to transform our talent and passion. Although we still maintain both channels, we realized that alliances with other companies help us to plan and make a more orderly and constant impact.
After some long ideation sessions, working in several areas, we were able to sell the inventory we had in the United States, offering companies products that were aligned with their purpose and brand identity.
Spoiler alert: This is how we discovered that the B2B channel had enormous potential, which defined our strategy for the following years.
The transition flowed, after the chaos. We realized that as entrepreneurs, we were used to a certain degree to living through crises, facing eventuality and changing plans, which helped us to iterate nimbly.
Fatima: Going through a failure as a team taught me that this makes us stronger and more united. Sometimes, to avoid stress and ambiguity, we tried not to communicate the critical moments of the company with the rest of the employees, but after this experience and seeing the reaction of each one of us, I decided to share more of the positive and also the negative.
I found a point of balance between chaos and order. It awakened my curiosity to be less afraid of failure and to understand that it is very likely that we will continue to have some in the present and in the future, but that we are ready to go through them, as they will surely make us grow in different ways and at different levels.
I met myself in crisis, and I understood that self-compassion and self-care are important to be able to have enough strength in moments like these. In the end, our example speaks louder than words, and having the emotional balance is important to be able to lead and collaborate.
Fatima: First it was up to us as founders to assimilate the situation until we decided to convene and have this talk: open and honest.
It was definitely an awkward conversation, especially since we had just raised an investment round of over a million dollars.
We connected the 35 people of the team that we were at the time to a video call. We gave the news that the work that had been done for more than six months had to be paused in order to sell the more than 5,000 products that we had sent to the United States through other channels.
Contrary to what we could have imagined, the reaction of the team was extremely positive. They all understood the situation and were more determined than ever because they knew that there were hundreds of Artisans behind this project to whom we could not fail.
One of the reactions that impacted me the most was that of the Artisans, who contacted us to understand how they could help us, and even offered us financing options so as not to affect us. There we saw the value of creating solid working relationships with all the actors around our company.
We learned about the resilience of the communities in which we work, since they face crises more constantly and manage to recover despite the difficulties they face. We were experiencing that uncertainty for the first time and navigating with them was certainly very helpful and inspiring.
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Connect with Fatima!
Learn more about Someone Somewhere here.
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Edited by
Ricardo Guerrero
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Let's transform our perception of failure and use it as a catalyst for growth.
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