Valeria Gamboa Rodríguez, a 27-year-old fashion designer from Sopó, Cundinamarca, founded Bam & Vó in 2019 with US$57, a family sewing machine, and a graphic tablet she bought with severance pay from a weekend job; the brand converts original illustrations of Colombian frogs, birds, turtles, and other endemic species into tote bags, scarves, notebooks, and everyday textiles that Gamboa designs entirely from her own workshop.
The brand’s premise rests on a fact Gamboa cites as her central argument: Colombia ranks as the world’s most biodiverse country per square kilometer, yet most Colombians carry limited familiarity with that richness, and Bam & Vó addresses that distance not through campaigns but through objects people already use every day, making each illustration simultaneously a commercial product and a quiet advocacy tool for the country’s natural heritage.
From US$57 and a family sewing machine to a living brand
Gamboa studied fashion design and marketing at the Escuela Arturo Tejada Cano in Bogotá, and Bam & Vó began in 2019 as a print design experiment from a university course with no defined social purpose; the COVID-19 pandemic changed that direction when she recognized how little she herself knew about Colombia’s endemic species, prompting a full redirection of the brand toward making that biodiversity tangible through objects people encounter in their daily lives.
The financial origin reflects the production model the brand maintains today: Gamboa started with the family sewing machine her grandmother taught her to use, US$57 in personal savings, and a Wacom graphic tablet bought with weekend job severance pay; she now designs every illustration digitally using Procreate and Photoshop before transferring the prints to fabrics, including some ecological textiles, and has expanded the product portfolio entirely through reinvestment of profits rather than any outside capital.
The name carries that personal history directly into the brand: “Vó” derives from “vovó,” the Portuguese word for grandmother, honoring the woman who first placed Gamboa at a sewing machine, and the combination with “Bam” creates a mark that Gamboa describes as capturing something vibrant and handmade; she has consistently declined to sell the brand, calling it a project whose meaning exceeds its current commercial value.
Biodiversity as a commercial concept and cultural mission
Each product in the Bam & Vó catalog starts as an illustration Gamboa draws herself, then transfers to textiles that two women from Sopó confect from their homes as part of the brand’s production network, providing both women with an income source and placing the brand inside the pattern of small Colombian design businesses that generate local employment alongside a cultural output, all from a municipality of fewer than 30,000 people.
Colombia’s institutional support network has accompanied that growth across several channels: Gamboa participates in Sopó Emprende, a formalization and training program run by the Alcaldía de Sopó in 2026, and has completed courses and open calls with the Gobernación de Cundinamarca, the Universidad de La Sabana, and the Cámara de Comercio de Bogotá, each contributing market access, business training, and connections to the regional entrepreneurship network that Gamboa describes as fundamental to the brand’s development.
A pedacito de colombia and the road to international markets
A brand that uses Colombia’s natural identity as its core design argument builds a cultural positioning that generic lifestyle products cannot replicate, and that positioning is precisely what Gamboa references when she distinguishes a Bam & Vó tote bag from mass-produced alternatives; the illustrations carry a specificity, a named species, a particular color palette tied to a Colombian habitat, that turns an ordinary object into what she calls a pedacito de Colombia.
Gamboa’s 10-year vision targets Colombians living abroad as the brand’s most natural international buyer: people who want an object that connects them to the country they left but carries a contemporary visual language rather than the generic aesthetic of traditional souvenirs; that positioning separates Bam & Vó from the ethnic craft export model that most Colombian handcraft programs pursue and gives it a distinct market argument in cities with large Colombian diaspora communities.
Gamboa acknowledges that sales remain variable, with strong craft fair months offset by quieter digital periods, and she identifies building consistent online purchasing confidence as the brand’s most immediate commercial challenge; she has expressed openness to outside investment provided it brings market connections alongside capital and leaves the authorship of every illustration, the brand’s non-negotiable core, entirely in her hands.
Bam & Vó is the kind of brand Colombia’s creative economy produces often but rarely propels beyond craft fairs and regional showcases: purpose-driven, culturally rich, and built on a production model that could scale. What holds it back isn’t the product, it’s distribution. Independent textile design in Colombia struggles to break past Bogotá’s orbit, and the leap to international markets will be the real test. Over the next decade, Gamboa’s vision will hinge on whether Bam & Vó can close that gap without losing the artisanal soul that makes it matter.