Krissy Cela: Co-Founder of Oner Active

Episode 810

On today’s episode, we welcome Krissy Cela, Co-Founder and Creative Director of Oner Active and Founder of EvolveYou — a global fitness brand built to help women feel strong, confident, and supported in their bodies. What began as Krissy’s personal frustration with finding functional, flattering activewear for women who lift has grown into one of the fastest-growing fitness brands in the world, built entirely from the ground up and fueled by a deeply engaged community.
Krissy shares how she built Oner Active without outside funding by staying hyper-connected to her audience and designing products that solve real needs. We talk about building a brand by women, for women in a male-dominated industry, why community has been the brand’s greatest growth driver, and how authenticity and purpose can scale alongside profitability. Krissy also opens up about expanding the brand ecosystem through EvolveYou, advocating for women’s health, and redefining what strength looks like — both in fitness and in leadership.
This is a powerful conversation for founders, operators, and anyone interested in building a consumer brand rooted in connection, trust, and real-world impact.

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Transcript

Kara Goldin 0:00
I am unwilling to give up that I will start over from scratch as many times as it takes to get where I want to be. I want to be you. Just want to make sure you will get knocked down. But just make sure you don’t get knocked out, knocked out. So your only choice should be go focus on what you can control. Control. Control. Hi everyone, and welcome to the Kara Goldin show. Join me each week for inspiring conversations with some of the world’s greatest leaders. We’ll talk with founders, entrepreneurs, CEOs and really, some of the most interesting people of our time. Can’t wait to get started. Let’s go. Let’s go. Hi everyone, and welcome back to the Kara Goldin show, what happens when a personal frustration turns into a global movement, when one woman looks at an industry and says, This doesn’t work for me or for women like me, and decides to build something better, our next guest did exactly that what began as a mission to help women feel powerful, confident and supported in the gym, has grown into one of the fastest growing global fitness brands today, built entirely from the ground up, fueled by community and grounded in purpose. Today, we’ll hear how listening deeply to your audience, designing for real needs and staying relentlessly authentic can scale not just a brand, but a movement. I’m excited to be joined by Chrissy Chella, co founder and creative director of Oner Active and founder of another incredible, incredible brand evolve you. She’s a certified personal trainer turned entrepreneur who has redefined strength, leadership and what it means to build by women for women. So Chrissy, so nice to meet you and welcome to the show.

Krissy Cela 1:55
First of all, that’s the most incredible introduction to ever had in my entire career. I feel like I need to have you with me everywhere I go, in case I have imposter syndrome. So thank you so much. I feel absolutely honored to be here and just speak to you

Kara Goldin 2:11
absolutely well. I am so excited, and I’m obsessed with Oner Active, so I’m so thrilled that that you’re here. So for listeners just discovering Oner Active. How do you describe the brand and what you set out to build from the beginning?

Krissy Cela 2:28
Love this. It’s my elevator pitch. So you should always have your elevator pitch ready to go. So Oner Active is an active web brand designed for women by women. We specialize actually, in strength training above anything else in a world where we tell women to be skinny, we tell women to be strong, which is very powerful. As you said, my background is personal training, and I spent a good 10 years of my career really trying to help as many women lift and work out and know the benefits of working out before I founded Oner Active and essentially, I always ask the question of, Why is every billion dollar activewear brand founded by men? There’s never been a unicorn status activewear brand founded by women, even though women are the highest buyers of active wear to men. So not to make this a man V woman kind of situation, but I just felt like someone who had the credentials of what was needed in the gym, I felt like I could do it better for women. So we focus on silhouette, color and performance above everything else.

Kara Goldin 3:40
Well, you’ve done an incredible job, for sure, when you decided to launch Oner Active in 2020 What did you think was the most important piece to get right?

Krissy Cela 3:54
For me, it was definitely silhouette. So whenever I would buy other activewear brands, I always felt like I had to tailor it, cut it, dye it, fit it around me. And because for strength training, you tend to have a bit more glutes, or, like, bigger thighs, which is something that, again, notoriously, women have been told not to have. They’ve been told to be more heroin chic. So I always had to tailor product around me. So I always felt like there was nothing that actually fitted me when I wanted to lift perform, actually do these intense workouts. So Oner has come at a perfect stage for women who were was lacking that especially for women who have curves or have a bit more muscle. So that’s what I felt was definitely lacking in the industry, and that’s when Oner came into fruition, and that’s when I realized I could do it better without being arrogant. It was more of a confident status.

Kara Goldin 4:57
Where did the name come from? Oner?

Krissy Cela 4:59
Active. So it means to be remarkable in Latin. And I just fell in love with the fact that it had this interpretation of it being like the word Oner yourself. And then Oner is you can pronounce it in your own way. Some people say on her, such as, like on her. Other people say wanna. Others. Other people say unreactive. And I just think the best names in the world are ones that are open for interpretation. So if you look at some of the most global names in the world, they don’t actually mean much, but you give it meaning. So I wanted to have a word that didn’t have much meaning, but you gave it the meaning. But also in Latin, it meant something powerful and to be remarkable is exactly how every woman should feel. So I just thought it was a good, good little storytelling piece for my marketing brain.

Kara Goldin 5:52
Yes, definitely. I love, I love it. You did. It’s such a great, such a great name. So you built the brand, I think at least initially, without outside funding. Can you talk to me about the funding trajectory to date?

Krissy Cela 6:09
Yeah, I mean, it still hasn’t had any funding. It’s all bootstrapped still. Till this day, I did use a lot of the money that I had built as an influencer, so I worked with a lot of other brands before I started my own brand, which was a was great research and, you know, absorbing all of that learning from them, building my community, leveraging those brands with the knowledge and also the funds, because I would get paid to wear their product or take their product, basically. And so I don’t know if this is like the immigrant mentality in me or what it is, but my mom always told me to save every penny, so I would always just save as much money as possible for a rainy day, and then I ended up using a lot of those savings to start Oner Active and till this day, We’ve never taken a loan or external investment, but we are very much, very much, so looking forward to the next chapter of the business and getting the right next partner in to take it to The next level.

Kara Goldin 7:20
So you talked about community, and you had built a following amongst people who were interested in what you were speaking about. How important was that, prior to actually starting a brand, because a lot of people have an idea for a brand, but don’t necessarily have a following. It’s interesting, when I started the company that I started hint there really wasn’t social to speak of, but when I launched a book almost five years ago now, it was incredibly important, prior to actually getting a book out, that I actually had a decent following, because that actually helped people to know who I was and and ultimately sell more books. But I’m so curious, like, how important do you think it is today, especially if somebody’s got an idea, should they be going and trying to build up their influence and following First,

Krissy Cela 8:19
I had this conversation recently, actually, at Harvard, I was asked to come in as one of the speakers, and I had the privilege of meeting some incredible other founders of different businesses to mine, and we spoke about this notion of, is it easier to sell when you have a platform, or is it better when you don’t have a platform? And I think the natural response would be, you need a platform, but I have seen people with bigger followers and so much numbers behind their name, and they can’t convert, because Oner works with a lot of influences and a lot of talent, and we have seen some of the biggest names in the industry not convert for us, But we’ve seen people with like two to 3000 followers have an exceptional 90% retention and conversion rate. So I think the notion of thinking that people who have a large platform can convert and make loads of money is completely wrong. It’s about how you speak to your community and the small network that you have that’s like the first thing, the second thing, I would say, is that if you are starting a business after you’ve created a platform, which was my personal story, it comes with a double ended sword, meaning you are very accessible, people build a hyper power social relationship with you. If there’s any mistakes in the business, you are the easiest access point, and the business also lives and dies with you, meaning that if you as an individual, ie me, if I mess up along. Way my business will take a hit. So I think there’s like, multiple ways of seeing it, and especially if there’s a faceless brand, but it’s much more product driven, the founders can get away with a lot more things, I would say then, rather than someone who’s very exposed and very easily accessed, meaning you anyone can just send me a DM or a comment when things go wrong, whereas with a faceless brand, you don’t even know who this person is most of the time they don’t have social media. So I think there’s a notion of that, but I don’t think just anyone with a platform can create a business. To go from an influencer to an entrepreneur is a completely different ball game. You need grit. It’s a different work ethic. It’s a different way of operating. It’s a different level of like, the way your left and your right brain works. And I’ve worked with exceptional creators that just don’t have a business mindset, and I’ve had to guide them through even getting an accountant and the and the importance of that. So I don’t think everyone can run a business, and I don’t think you necessarily need a platform. I think you need fantastic product, and I think that you need to have exceptional word of mouth. That’s what I would say is more important.

Kara Goldin 11:17
When you were launching your first product, SKUs. How did you decide which to create first? I think that the especially well. I guess it doesn’t matter if you if you had funding or not. You never want to have too much inventory left, which has not been much of a problem for you. But, or for Oner Active, I should say, but how do you decide which products to launch first and next?

Krissy Cela 11:50
I think when it comes to knowing what to launch, one of the, I guess the one of the superpowers Oner has is the fact that its founder is a woman in sports, and so it inherently makes it so much easier to know what I need. And so a lot of the business model has strictly been, I guess, the decisions and product has strictly been based on my needs. And just speaking to women in my community, and their needs, and naturally, we’ve we’ve adopted that model of using that gut instinct that I have as a founder who’s in the industry, and then also supporting it by the data. So not everything I create hits and is amazing, and not everything that I make people love, but the things that I’m like really confident in, we push a lot, and then naturally my merch team or my commercial team will come in and go, right now we need five colors of this. What are the seasonal colors that we’re going to hit and when? When are we going to be able to get that stock in? And what are the colors during that time that we might need. So again, it really helps when a founder creates a product that they actually use and they believe in. Nothing is worse than people just putting their name on something and put an hour into the world, because it’s a trend. Everything’s cyclical. So eventually that’s going to die down. But movement is not cyclical. It’s quite sustainable, and everyone should be doing it for the rest of their lives. So with Oner, a lot of the of the products that we make are with that mentality, rather than a trend mentality.

Kara Goldin 13:38
So you’re a co founder. How did you pick your your co founder?

Krissy Cela 13:44
Yeah, I mean, this is a fantastic story. I actually was working for their business as a ambassador for eight years. Oh, so I grew that relationship. They saw, you know, they saw how much I was passionate about active where they had the infrastructure, which, again, everyone always says, Oh, I have to do it alone. And that’s why it took me longer. And I always go, but that was your decision. You could have picked a partner, like picking the right partner, and picking a partner that can, like, push your vision to the next level quicker with an abundant amount of experience, I would rather that, because my shares are going to be worth way more than doing it alone. And just for the sake of being egotistical and saying I did it alone, I don’t want to do it alone. You can’t do it alone. That’s why I have over 100 employees. If I could do it alone, I would just be picking and packing the orders myself. So picking a partner that had the infrastructure, had the prior experience with different type of product, which in this case, it was supplements having, like the warehouse experience and logistics experience and SKUs and kind of me. To gain in any cash flow issues. That was like my biggest superpower at the start. We we still work together exceptionally well, and I focus so much on the product, the brand, the partnerships. And now since then, we’ve built an incredible director team that focused on all the things they used to focus on. So now on up really is an entity completely separate on its own, which is beautiful, but I would advise a lot of founders to pick a very good partner to do their business with.

Kara Goldin 15:38
Yeah, definitely. As the brand grew quickly, what parts of the business were you, I guess, are were more challenging. You had mentioned, actually, before we hit a record that you brought in a CEO to help you really grow the company, which I think is really wise, and especially knowing early on which parts you really wanted to focus on. You’re not only the co founder, but also the creative director. Think sometimes founders think that they have to do it all. What have you learned about that?

Krissy Cela 16:14
I mean, look, I very much am in everything still. Now I there’s no decision that gets made in the business without my Yes. And I think any founder who thinks that after five years, they’re just going to step back and enjoy the Caribbean Sea, it’s just bit delusional. So as founders, you’ve got to be willing to be everywhere and anywhere you are the jack of all trades and probably the Master of None, I would say, because you just have to be, I would say 70% good at everything, but you’re never really going to be 100% good at one thing, because it’s not feasible for a founder to be good at just one thing. That’s why then you bring people in that are good at one thing, and you have that tunnel vision focus with your directors. So my first hire was actually a ops director. And I think hiring the unsexy roles first quote, unquote is probably the most important thing. So logistics chief, a ops manager, a CEO, a financial director, so you don’t run out of cash like those things are probably the most critical, and it’s only been now that we’ve hired a brand director. It’s taken us five years, so now we’re hiring more the Glossier roles, still very challenging, not dismissing that, but I think when you objectively look at it, handling finances is arguably a little bit less sexy than handling brand, definitely. So I would say, why are the less sexy things?

Kara Goldin 17:52
First, when you launched five years ago, you were launching it as a direct to consumer brand, and you’ve continued to grow the brand, and now you’ve grown globally. I’d love to hear a little bit more about that. How you thought about growing beyond, I guess, the US,

Krissy Cela 18:17
so majority of our community is US based even though the brand was inherently founded in London, and our whole HQ is in London, but we’re now building a satellite team in New York, which is quite exciting. We also are changing our ways of selling. We’re launching our first retail store in New York City this winter, which is brilliant. So finally, people who have never heard of us are going to go and fill the product. A lot has to do with our partnerships. So we have incredible brand ambassadors. And it was very intentional choosing brand ambassadors from the US so we could continue enriching the US community. We really dived into cultural moments. Every year we’ve done Hispanic Heritage Month, which is so important to us, Black History Month, which is so important to us, and just again, enriching that community experience and basically rinse and repeat in that model, go into the UK, go to Europe, Asia, potentially the Middle East in the next like 10 to 15 years. And if something isn’t broken, you can pretty much do the same thing and then take it to different areas of the world.

Kara Goldin 19:36
Is there one skew that has maybe kind of surprised you that it works in one country, but it just doesn’t work. Or maybe it’s a color as well. Color, yeah,

Krissy Cela 19:48
color is a big one. So we noticed that in the US, they love bright colors and they love more expressive colors, but in the UK and Europe, it’s much more of the more. Own down colors. I do think it’s because majority of our community is, you know, New York, Miami, LA, and if you look at Miami and LA, it’s hotter, exactly and then. But it’s just very interesting to see how the US is much more expressive to color, but Europe and the UK kind of shy away from it, so our website has to also mimic that. So what was shown on the UK website to the US website has to be visibly different.

Kara Goldin 20:32
Strength means a lot of things to different people who are enjoying health and wellness and fitness. Do you see one trend in particular outside of strength that maybe has really picked up that everyone is doing, whether it’s a boot camp or Pilates or running or cycling? What? What is it that yoga and what is it that you see has been kind of hot amongst because I feel like you’re also listening right to a lot of your consumers and how they’re using your product. But I’d be so curious how you’ve what you’ve heard about that it’s

Krissy Cela 21:17
really interesting, because I’ve been in this industry for 13 years now. So I’ve seen, really, the inception of of the fitness community through social media to now it being fully formed. And it’s so cyclical, like you have strength training, then you’ll have yoga, then it’s like, all about running. Now it’s like, all about aligns. So it’s like very it’s very trend based. But one thing I will say is the the amount of movement women are doing now to what they did 10 years ago is unbelievable. Like, even if you look at the stat from 2024 to 25 40% of women are increasing with strength training. So they’re doing way more strength training. So that’s number one. So I take all that data in, and I know I’m on the right path. The second thing is, I think that a lot of women are not just doing one thing, they’re doing multiple things. So they’re going to Pilates, then they’re going to the gym, then they’re going for a run. And that’s why I Oner. I create. It’s something called the Oner cycle. So it’s on the O of the Oner and essentially you have lifting hybrid stretch and living and so how we create our product is within one of those franchises. So we’ll specialize in lifting product, we’ll specialize in hybrid product. And essentially that cycle also mimics the woman’s menstrual cycle. So which is, again, I feel like only a woman could think about that. So as creative director, I sit back and I think about all this stuff, and I’m like, How can I make sure that when a woman comes to Oner she’s considered so when she’s feeling her best, right at the top of her menstrual cycle, she’s lifting, then she’s feeling her most sensual. She’s hybrid, meaning the colors have to be brighter. She’s more energetic. But then when she’s emerging her menstrual cycle, she slows it down. So that’s where our stretch comes in, and that’s why we have products like soft motion, which are much more soft, and silhouette, which is what you’ve been sent and that you love, much more buttery, less compressive around the tummy. And then finally, living, which is when you really should rest. And you know you we can do it, outdoor, indoor living. We have pajamas now. So that’s very much our North Star as a business. And I have never seen any business in the world adopt that model when they when it comes to create product. So, yeah, it’s, it’s a it’s a pretty strong narrative, but I would say that that’s how women are moving now. They’re very much moving in a multiple stream way, rather than just one way.

Kara Goldin 23:59
That’s so interesting. And I totally agree with you. It’s, it’s a, it’s, and I love that narrative that you’re bringing people along to recognize that that is definitely what it looks like for women every every month, no matter how old you are, right? So it’s, it’s so interesting. You also built evolve you alongside Oner Active. Can you talk about that a bit?

Krissy Cela 24:25
Yes, evolve you is actually my first child. It is my fitness app. And again, it’s a fitness platform for women. So you have incredible specialized personal trainers there that can take you through Pilates, prenatal, a prenatal, post partum, getting back into the gym if you’ve had to recover, we have everything that you need. And that business is incredible. And we have over 80,000 subscribers per month, which is incredible to hear. Amazing. Yeah, I’m just growing year on year, and I’m really excited for the next stages of Evolve you and Oner, because there’s a lot to come there. So I’m excited for that merger

Kara Goldin 25:09
that’s awesome. What’s the one or two skews that you’re that you’re most proud of, or that everyone needs to have that is just a must in Oner Active

Krissy Cela 25:23
Well, number one is definitely the straight leg soft motion pants. They went absolutely viral. We set we sell like we sold 15,000 units in 60 seconds of those pants, which is amazing. I know I still don’t understand it, but I kind of do, because they’re just the most comfortable pants ever. And also, everyone was really focused on leggings. And then Anna went the other way and focused on pants, but in a workout format. And then I would honestly say, probably a unified jacket with pockets, just convenient, easy snatches you in and just like perfect for everyday use. So I’d say those two items are probably my favorite items at Oner.

Kara Goldin 26:10
So last question, when someone puts on Oner Active for the first time, what do you hope they feel?

Krissy Cela 26:19
I hope that every woman who puts on her active on her body feels like this. Wait a minute. Why have I not felt like this before, and why is no active wear fitted like this before? So that’s the reaction I want from them, and I hope that they feel

Kara Goldin 26:38
I love it well. Chrissy, thank you so much for sharing and sharing with us today all about your journey and introducing so many people to Oner Active. For everyone listening, be sure to check out Oner Active and evolve you and follow Chrissy to see how she’s continuing to redefine strength and leadership and what’s possible. Thank you again, Chrissy and I’ll see everyone the next time on the Kara Goldin show. Thank you. Thanks again for listening to the Kara Goldin show. If you would please give us a review and feel free to share this podcast with others who would benefit and of course, feel free to subscribe so you don’t miss a single episode of our podcast, just a reminder that I can be found on all platforms. At Kara Goldin, I would love to hear from you too. So feel free to DM me, and if you want to hear more about my journey, I hope you will have a listen or pick up a copy of my Wall Street Journal, best selling book, undaunted, where I share more about my journey, including founding and building. Hint, we are here every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Thanks for listening, and goodbye for now.

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