Oner Active was founded in 2020 by Krissy Cela (3.2 million Instagram followers; 1.2 million TikTok followers).
To hear Cela tell it, though, Oner was truly built over the 10 years prior, during which she built her personal brand on social media — for the first five years, she did not work with brands and focused solely on sharing her fitness journey and building her personal community.
All that time, she said, was research for the brand that would become Oner. And though the brand has reached $190 million in annual revenue, Cela is quick to correct anyone who thinks it was an overnight success. As a fitness influencer, Cela paid attention to the brands she worked with — “I was [watching] what [other brands’] communities were saying — what women were saying they love, what women were saying they didn’t like — and [paying attention to] the products that I liked and products that I didn’t like. And I utilized that as a way to then build my brand,” Cela said last week, on stage at Glossy’s E-Commerce Summit in Miami.
And, having started as a creator herself, Cela went in with a deep understanding of just how valuable creators can be.
One way that currently plays out at Oner is through its Move Ambassadors program, which receives about 30,000 applicants each time it opens. “They write about why they want to work with [Oner] and why they should be chosen,” Cela said. Of those 30,000 applicants — all of whom the brand receives email data from — 100 are selected to receive an Oner activewear set.
“All of them are vetted, and then we send them a free set from the latest collection — no one else will have access to that collection. And in return, they’ll create content. I think we’ve created 16 million impressions across social when only gifting 100 sets,” she said, explaining the program’s high ROI. “The girl with the content that performs the best then becomes affiliated with the brand. [She can then earn] commission. She gets sets from each drop, and eventually she becomes an ambassador — and some of our ambassadors are making millions a year.”
Many of the applicants have already built strong communities of their own, ones that Cela knows Oner will benefit from accessing. “Our best ambassador is Kelly Matthews,” Cela said, citing an example, “She has a community on her own — she built that by herself — and then we come in, and we integrate that into the Oner community; we’ll take her 1.5 million community members, and we’ll bring them into the Oner community.” Move Ambassadors function differently than typical brand-influencer partnerships: “They are exclusive to the brand, they get paid a salary, and then they get paid commission.”
“This year, we’re set to make $280 million, and I would say about $52 million will come from them,” Cela said of the brand’s ambassadors and affiliate partners. “If you sell [product for us], you deserve to be paid your value.”
Oner has also won by understanding that different ambassadors serve different purposes. For example, some do not exist solely to drive sales. “Some of them don’t convert. You have to hire for equity and credibility, [too],” Cela said. Recently, the brand launched a product collaboration with Lori Harvey (4.7 million Instagram followers; 937,000 TikTok followers). “Her name is on par with Oner’s name,” Cela said of the strategy.
Cela is also far more liberal with gifting than some founders. “I gift everyone. I gift waitresses at restaurants, I gift bartenders, I gift a girl that’s given me a massage, I don’t care. I want everyone in Oner, so I’m not very protective over that,” Cela said. She’s also not particularly concerned about whether those recipients post and tag. “I’ve seen a lot of discourse online where people go, ‘I gifted an influencer, she wore my brand, and she never tagged me.’ I’m like, ‘Yeah, OK, but she wore your brand, so that’s step one.’ I think you have to be very emotionally detached; you have to be less sensitive. The whole point is that people are wearing your brand. You don’t know whether, by her wearing [the brand out], someone asked her, ‘Hey, where’s that legging form? Where are those shoes from? Where’s that headband from?’ And she would have said your brand’s name.”
The creator/ambassador strategy has helped fuel Oner’s growth while allowing the company to remain largely independent. The business is still bootstrapped, according to Cela, and she retains a 50% ownership stake. The company recently took on a loan to support retail expansion and plans to open its first store in New York City later this year, followed by locations in Los Angeles and Miami.
