Alvaro Gellings: Mastering Creator-Led Business Growth
Alvaro Gellings, a serial entrepreneur from Spain, has become a prominent figure in the creator economy through his innovative approach to building and scaling brands. In August 2023, he shared his insights at the OOAK Mastermind conference in Castelfalfi, Italy, discussing his journey from gaming startups to multi-million-dollar fashion and sportswear companies.
Gellings first gained recognition with a gaming company that expanded primarily through paid advertising, a method he describes simply as “buying reach and selling the product.” However, his perspective shifted dramatically in 2021 after moving to Hamburg, Germany, where he lived above a Twitch creator. A conversation at a streamer’s birthday party highlighted a crucial difference: “You have to buy your reach,” Gellings was told, “I have the reach.” This insight laid the foundation for his future ventures.
Later that year, Gellings co-founded Ama Studios, a fashion brand launched in collaboration with two of Germany’s most popular online personalities, Trymacs and Amar. The launch was a staggering success, generating approximately €1.2 million (about $1.4 million) in sales within the first hour. This achievement underscored the power of creator-led launches and the commercial value of digital influence.
Creator-Led Launches and the Birth of Day One
Building on the Ama Studios experience, Gellings developed a new conviction: creators are not just paid media channels but can serve as the narrative engine of a brand. This philosophy shaped his next venture—Day One, a sportswear company he founded in 2024 with German creator and endurance athlete Arda Saatçi.
Recognizing that consumers rarely urgently seek out the next gym tank or running shoe, Gellings emphasized storytelling as essential to sportswear marketing. “Nobody’s in urgent need of the next T-shirt,” he said. “You have to create a story.”
Gellings’s approach for Day One was to blend athletic achievement with compelling content. When he met Saatçi, who had a modest following of about 100,000 at the time, Gellings quickly assembled a comprehensive pitch that focused on visibility rather than traditional influencer equity models. The proposal featured an ambitious Berlin-to-New York run, documented through long-form and short-form content distributed across TikTok, Instagram, YouTube Shorts, and more. This real-time endurance journey would culminate in the official launch of Day One.
The Cyborg Season Campaign: A Viral Content Machine
Day One’s flagship campaign, “Cyborg Season,” centered on Saatçi’s ultra-endurance challenges, including a 3,000-kilometer ultramarathon. The campaign leveraged a massive content operation, employing around 200 content clippers who repackaged footage for short-form platforms. Additionally, the company activated a creator network, engaging Twitch stars and other influencers to react and amplify the content.
This ecosystem of official clips, reactions, and independent reposts drove extraordinary reach. Gellings reported more than 1.5 billion impressions in German-speaking markets, with Saatçi’s follower count rising by over 800,000. Individual YouTube videos regularly attracted 400,000 to 600,000 views.
Commercially, Day One saw nearly $1 million in revenue on the day Saatçi reached New York, selling out their entire inventory shortly after. The initial marketing and operations investment was €500,000 (approximately $582,517). Across three Cyborg Season campaigns, the company estimates roughly 3.5 billion impressions were generated. The campaigns also achieved live streaming milestones — including over two million concurrent YouTube viewers and 1.2 million on Twitch, with TikTok live streams generating three billion likes.
Despite these successes, Gellings acknowledges the inherent risk of building a brand tightly coupled with a single creator. “You have a huge human risk,” he explains. To mitigate this, the strategy focuses on growing the brand’s total revenue faster than the creator’s share, aiming to reduce dependency over time without removing the creator from the core narrative.
Building a Brand That Stands Independently
During his keynote, Gellings described a three-phase framework for creator-led companies: first, “founder is the brand,” then “the founder curates the brand,” and finally, “the brand stands alone.”
To transition Day One beyond Saatçi’s personal audience, the company executed premium seeding campaigns, sending limited-edition boxes containing unique memorabilia—such as a fragment of a shoe worn during an ultramarathon—to elite athletes, musicians, streamers, and other cultural influencers. Each package included a personalized video and letter, creating a sense of ownership and honor among recipients.
This approach expanded Day One’s visibility outside the endurance sports niche, with high-profile recipients sharing the packages publicly. Over time, these boxes became coveted collector’s items, reinforcing the brand’s premium positioning.
Investing in Brand Relevance Through Cultural Moments
Further cementing its market presence, Day One created 99 Laps, an endurance event combining athletic competition with entertainment. Featuring 100 elite athletes running 99 laps with eliminations after each, the event attracted approximately 30,000 concurrent live viewers and generated 100 to 200 million impressions. Sponsorship revenue reached about €400,000 ($467,152), while production costs were around €450,000 ($525,546), reflecting a strategic short-term investment to build brand relevance rather than immediate profit.
The event aligned Day One with established endurance ecosystem brands like Garmin and Blackroll, positioning it as a premium name. The Ultra line, a high-performance sportswear collection, was introduced during the event through elite runners wearing the gear, prompting viewers to sign up for launch updates—a tactic that emphasized storytelling over traditional advertising.
For Gellings, the creator’s role is just the launchpad: “The creator is the first step of the rocket,” he says. “It helps you reach a certain height super, super fast.” The ultimate goal is to build a recognizable sportswear brand that resonates even with consumers unfamiliar with the founder or the original campaigns.
Reflecting on his journey, Gellings remains humble and forward-looking: “We’re still very early in the process. I’m also at the very beginning of my entrepreneurial journey, even though I’ve been doing it for nine years now.”
