Popflex Founder Had 3 Choices Before Building His Fashion Empire
“Become a lawyer, a doctor or a loser.” Those were the three options Cassey Ho’s father gave his 18-year-old daughter after she expressed her intention to pursue a career in fashion design.
“When I told him I wanted to be a designer, he said ‘Absolutely not’ and pretty much killed my dream,” shares the Blogilates founder and Popflex CEO. Luck in a recent interview.
Ho recounts that her father and mother — an engineer and a cake decorator — immigrated from Vietnam to the United States in the mid-1970s and worked tirelessly to provide stability for their two daughters.
“Being raised by Asian immigrant parents really instilled this sense of working really hard, being tireless, and being really resilient no matter what comes your way,” Ho said.
Because of their difficult circumstances, Ho and her sister were raised to be very conscious about money and spending.
“I remember going to McDonald’s was a luxury,” Ho said. “I only shopped on clearance; we never bought anything at full price.”
As a teenager, Ho reluctantly accepted her father’s career advice, attending Whittier College in Southern California on a full scholarship to major in biology in preparation for medical school. But halfway through her studies, Ho knew her medical career wouldn’t last long. The “hardworking, well-behaved daughter” wanted to rebel.
“I am someone who really lives by my heart, and my heart started to feel empty,” she said.
Her outlet for coping with school stress was teaching “POP Pilates” classes at the local 24 Hour Fitness center—a passion she discovered in high school, and an after-school activity her parents disapproved of.
“I started teaching after school and they said, ‘You have to stop that, it’s a waste of time, you need to spend more time studying physics,’” she recalls.
But the part-time job she found on Craigslist became the springboard to her multimillion-dollar success and built the foundation for her viral success. YouTube next.
How Blogilates Started
When Ho uploads first video When she took to YouTube in 2009 at just 22 years old, she never expected the 10-minute workout to reach more than 40 students from her local POP Pilates class, let alone thousands of users.
“I got thousands of views and hundreds of comments from people all over the world asking for more,” she said.
But there was no master plan. Ho said her uploads were just a way to stay in touch with her students after she moved to the East Coast for a job in fashion sales. But as her community grew, fans began asking for branded merchandise.
“I bought some white shirts from Forever 21, screen printed them locally, and glued them on Facebookand they sold out within minutes,” she says. “That was the moment I realized, oh, okay, Blogilates isn’t a screen name, it’s a brand.”
Fourteen years after that fateful YouTube upload, Blogilates has reached 10.1 million followers is an eight-figure business, but the brand is still self-funded by Ho: “It’s all my money, no investors.”
Blogilates launched on Target in December 2020. But for Ho, the goal wasn’t just to help her products reach a new audience, it was also to provide representation, even if she was “really scared” to do so.
“The truth is, I didn’t want my image plastered all over the packaging because I was afraid that my mixed Vietnamese-Chinese face and skin color would turn off customers who weren’t used to seeing someone who looked like me in their store,” she wrote in a 2020 blog post. “I think this will reduce sales.”
Today, her clothing and images can be found at Target stores across the United States.
“I don’t want other Asian American girls to walk into the fitness area at the mall and not see anyone who looks like them,” Ho wrote. “This Target sale isn’t just about product. It’s about representation.”
Take Over the Fashion Empire
Before starting Blogilates, Ho had a problem teaching POP Pilates: She wasn’t cute and It was functional to hold all her belongings on the way to class. And everything she saw while shopping didn’t really serve her needs: “Heavy bags, ugly colors, not my style.”
She took matters into her own hands, venturing into LA’s fashion district to buy some vegan leather and gold chains before sewing her first bag. Ho’s students loved the design and wanted to know where they could buy one too.
Years later, her childhood dream of becoming a fashion designer came true.
Launched in 2016, her activewear brand Popflex is an eight-figure business and can also be found at Target stores. Plus, the brand has a cult following. While promoting her album “The Tortured Poets Department,” Taylor Swift shared a short clip on YouTube in which she wore Popflex’s patented lavender pirouette dress. The pirouette dress sold out in minutes. Then the pirouette dress sold out in every color.
“When [Taylor Swift] “When she wears something, even if she only wears it for 0.3 seconds, people want it because they want to be a part of her journey and her life,” Ho said.
It was the best sales day of the year and the company’s second-highest sales day ever.
Between best-selling designs, blogging, and running two eight-figure businesses, Ho still takes time to reflect on her journey and what has brought her to where she is today.
“The secret to my success is really following my heart. I know that sounds cliché, but I don’t think it’s ever steered me wrong.”
