How the Tomov Brothers Pulled Zerone Studio Back From Bankruptcy — and Now Face a Scaling Test

How Free Viral Videos Rescued Zerone Studio From Collapse

In early 2025, Ivelin and Teodor Tomov walked into a Sofia fast-food restaurant with a camera and a small crew and offered to shoot a fun promotional video for free. The owners were puzzled but agreed. For the brothers it was a gamble born of necessity: their creative agency Zerone Studio was on the brink of bankruptcy, one client after another had left, and the partner and investor who helped start the business had stepped away, citing differences over how to move forward.

The gamble paid off. Smash'n'Pass, the burger chain that also has outlets in Plovdiv and Sozopol, liked the result and signed up for a paid social-media content subscription. Other small businesses followed. Zerone, founded in 2023 as a wedding-video operation, now sells monthly subscriptions for short, colorful branded videos designed to keep the attention of Gen Z audiences. The brothers call themselves “attention engineers” and say their clips have collected more than 100 million views, a figure that comes from the founders themselves.

The studio remains small but profitable. Studio 0.1, which operates under the Zerone brand, reported 2024 revenue of 126,000 Bulgarian leva and net profit of 77,000 Bulgarian leva, a margin above 60%. The brothers say revenue rose in 2025 but did not disclose figures. Today roughly 80% of revenue comes from short-video subscriptions and 20% from project work, with contracts running at least six months. Zerone was also named a finalist in Forbes Business Awards 2026 in the Services category.

The next step is geographic expansion — the brothers mention the UK, Dubai and Italy as candidates. But they admit the real test is whether they can turn a business built on their own creative instincts into a system that produces the same quality, speed and style without them in the room.

Zerone Studio's Scale Problem: Can Brotherly Talent Become a System?

The Free-Work Bet That Brought Zerone Back

The free-video strategy was effectively a customer-acquisition campaign paid for with the founders' own time. It worked because the product was visible immediately: Smash'n'Pass could see exactly what it would get before paying. The six-month subscription contracts that followed gave the studio something it lacked during the crisis — predictable revenue. The trade-off is that every free shoot is time not spent on paid work, so the tactic only makes sense if the conversion rate holds as the company grows.

A 60% Margin Signals a Founder-Bound Model

Zerone's 2024 numbers — 126,000 leva in revenue and 77,000 leva in net profit — look outstanding for a creative agency. But a margin that high at that scale typically means the owners' own production work is doing most of the heavy lifting. That is exactly why scaling is hard. The brothers' plan is to replicate teams of five people serving roughly ten clients, and then apply that formula in new cities or countries. Standardising taste, editing style and speed across those teams is a management problem, not a creative one, and it will determine whether the business can survive outside Sofia.

One Cast, Many Brands: The Identity Trade-Off

Zerone deliberately avoids using established influencers. The same faces appear in a pizzeria's clip and, a few scrolls later, in an ad for an escape room. That keeps production fast and affordable, but it creates a risk for clients: their brand story can be blurred when the same performer represents competitors. The article notes that newer restaurant and fast-moving consumer goods brands are most willing to test this approach. Established premium brands would likely demand exclusivity or separate casts — a cost Zerone may eventually have to price into its subscriptions.

The Algorithm Tailwind Is Real but Shared

Short-form video is not a speculative bet. A Meltwater study cited in the article says TikTok users spend an average of 97 minutes a day on the app, more than YouTube's 85 minutes. That is the demand side of Zerone's growth. The supply side, however, has low barriers: any small studio can copy the format. Zerone's claimed 100 million views show it can win the algorithm game, but the durable advantage will come from client retention and a production system competitors cannot easily replicate. The brothers' own closing warning — that competition will eventually drown them if they do not scale — is the honest summary of the risk.

Making Zerone Studio's 5-to-10 Team Formula Repeatable

For the Tomov brothers and any similarly positioned small creative agency:

• Codify the production playbook before adding headcount in new markets: document the workflow, style rules, editing templates and client communication standards that let five people serve ten clients without a founder on every shoot.
• Test the 5-to-10 team formula in one lower-cost market before committing to the UK, Dubai or Italy, the three expansion targets Ivelin Tomov named; a failed launch in an expensive city could eat the 77,000 leva net profit Zerone earned in 2024.
• Turn the shared-actor issue into a product decision: offer an exclusivity add-on to the six-month subscription contracts so restaurant and FMCG clients worried about brand dilution can pay more for separate casting.
• Measure the economics of the free-shoot funnel: track how many free productions convert to paying subscribers and the average revenue per client over the minimum six-month term, so the survival tactic from early 2025 is consciously scaled or retired rather than repeated by habit.