“Be a lawyer, doctor, or failure.” These had been the three selections Cassey Ho’s father gave to his then-18-year-old daughter after she expressed her intent to pursue a profession in trend design.
“When I told him I wanted to be a designer, he was like, ‘Absolutely not,’ and pretty much crushed my dreams,” the Blogilates founder and Popflex CEO instructed Fortune in a latest interview.
Ho says her father and mom—an engineer and cake decorator, respectively—immigrated from Vietnam to the United Acknowledged within the mid 1970’s and labored tirelessly to create stability for his or her two daughters.
“Being raised by Asian immigrant parents really instilled this sense of working really hard, tirelessly, and kind of just being really resilient no matter what happens to you,” Ho stated.
Cash was tight, so Ho and her sister had been raised to be very aware about cash and spending.
“I remember that going to McDonald’s was a luxury,” Ho stated. “I was only shopping on clearance; we never bought anything full-price.”
As an adolescent, Ho begrudgingly accepted her father’s profession recommendation, heading off to Whittier Faculty in Southern California on a full-ride scholarship to pursue a biology main in preparation for medical college. However midway by her rigorous research, Ho knew her medical profession can be short-lived. The “studious and obedient daughter” wished to insurgent.
“I’m someone who really lives by following my heart, and my heart just started feeling so hollow,” she stated.
Her outlet to deal with stress from college got here within the type of educating “POP Pilates” courses at her native 24 Hour Health—a ardour she found in highschool, and an after-school exercise her mother and father didn’t approve of.
“I started teaching after classes and they were like, ‘you need to stop that, that is a waste of time, you need to spend more time studying for physics,” she recalled.
However that part-time gig she discovered on Craigslist served because the springboard for her multi-million greenback success, and constructed the muse for her viral YouTube following.
How Blogilates began
When Ho uploaded her first video to YouTube in 2009 at simply 22 years previous, she by no means anticipated the 10-minute exercise to succeed in greater than the 40 college students from her native POP Pilates class, not to mention hundreds of customers.
“I got thousands of views and hundreds of comments from people from all over the world asking for more,” she stated.
However there was no grasp plan. Ho stated her uploads had been merely a option to keep linked along with her college students after she moved cross-country to the East Coast for a trend merchandising job. However as her group grew, followers began requesting branded merchandise.
“I bought some blank shirts from Forever 21, screen-printed them locally, and put them up on Facebook, and they sold out within minutes,” she stated. “It was in that moment when I realized, oh, okay, Blogilates is not a screen name, it is a brand.”
Fourteen years after that fateful YouTube add, Blogilates has reached 10.1 million followers as an eight-figure enterprise, however the model has remained totally bootstrapped by Ho: “All my own money, no investors.”
Blogilates launched in Goal in December 2020. However for Ho, it wasn’t nearly serving to her merchandise attain new audiences, it was about offering illustration, even when she was “really scared” to take action.
“The truth is, I didn’t want my image plastered all over the packaging because I was afraid my Vietnamese-Chinese face and skin color would turn off customers who weren’t used to seeing someone who looked like me in their stores,” she wrote in a 2020 weblog put up. “I thought it would hurt sales.”
Now, her clothes and persona will be present in Goal shops all throughout the U.S.
“I don’t want other little Asian American girls walking into the fitness section at the mall and not seeing anyone who looks like them,” Ho wrote.” This Goal drop isn’t just about product. It’s about illustration.”
Taking on the style empire
Earlier than beginning Blogilates, Ho ran right into a bump whereas educating POP Pilates: She didn’t have something that was cute and purposeful to carry all of her stuff on the way in which to class. And every thing she noticed whereas purchasing didn’t fairly serve her wants: “Heavy bags, ugly colors, just not my style.”
She took issues into her personal arms, venturing into L.A.’s trend district for some vegan leather-based and gold chains, earlier than stitching collectively her first bag. Ho’s college students fell in love with the design, and wished to know the place they may purchase one, too.
Years later, her childhood goals of changing into a clothier grew to become a actuality.
Launched in 2016, her athletic-wear model Popflex is an eight-figure enterprise and will also be present in Goal shops. Plus, the model has a really well-known fan. Throughout promotion for her “The Tortured Poets Department” album launch, Taylor Swift shared a YouTube Quick during which she was carrying Popflex’s patented lavender pirouette skort. Inside minutes, the lavender skort bought out. Then the pirouette skort bought out in each single colour.
“When [Taylor Swift] is wearing something, even if she’s wearing something for 0.3 seconds, people want that because they want to be part of her journey and her life, too,” Ho stated.
It was the very best gross sales day of this 12 months and the corporate’s second-highest gross sales date ever.
Between sell-out designs, her weblog, and operating two eight-figure companies, Ho nonetheless takes time to replicate on her journey and what introduced her success immediately.
“My secret to success is truly following my heart. I know that sounds so cliche, but I don’t think it has ever led me in the wrong direction.”
