“Be a lawyer, doctor, or failure.” Those were the three choices Cassey Ho’s father gave to his then-18-year-old daughter after she expressed her intent to pursue a career in fashion 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 told Fortune in a recent interview.
Ho says her father and mother—an engineer and cake decorator, respectively—immigrated from Vietnam to the United Stated in the mid 1970’s and worked tirelessly to create stability for their 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 said.
Money was tight, so Ho and her sister were raised to be very conscious about money and spending.
“I remember that going to McDonald's was a luxury,” Ho said. “I was only shopping on clearance; we never bought anything full-price.”
As a teenager, Ho begrudgingly accepted her father’s career advice, heading off to Whittier College in Southern California on a full-ride scholarship to pursue a biology major in preparation for medical school. But halfway through her rigorous studies, Ho knew her medical career would be short-lived. The “studious and obedient daughter” wanted to rebel.
“I'm someone who really lives by following my heart, and my heart just started feeling so hollow,” she said.
Her outlet to cope with stress from school came in the form of teaching “POP Pilates” classes at her local 24 Hour Fitness—a passion she discovered in high school, and an after-school activity her parents did not 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.
But that part-time gig she found on Craigslist served as the springboard for her multi-million dollar success, and built the foundation for her viral YouTube following.
How Blogilates started
When Ho uploaded her first video to YouTube in 2009 at just 22 years old, she never expected the 10-minute workout to reach more than the 40 students from her local POP Pilates class, let alone thousands of users.
“I got thousands of views and hundreds of comments from people from all over the world asking for more,” she said.
But there was no master plan. Ho said her uploads were merely a way to stay connected with her students after she moved cross-country to the East Coast for a fashion merchandising job. But as her community grew, fans started 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 said. “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 upload, Blogilates has reached 10.1 million followers as an eight-figure business, but the brand has remained entirely bootstrapped by Ho: “All my own money, no investors.”
Blogilates launched in Target in December 2020. But for Ho, it wasn’t just about helping her products reach new audiences, it was about providing 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 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 blog post. “I thought it would hurt sales.”
Now, her clothing and persona can be found in Target stores all across 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 Target drop is not just about product. It’s about representation.”
Taking over the fashion empire
Before starting Blogilates, Ho ran into a bump while teaching POP Pilates: She didn’t have anything that was cute and functional to hold all of her stuff on the way to class. And everything she saw while shopping didn’t quite serve her needs: “Heavy bags, ugly colors, just not my style.”
She took matters into her own hands, venturing into L.A.’s fashion district for some vegan leather and gold chains, before sewing together her first bag. Ho’s students fell in love with the design, and wanted to know where they could buy one, too.
Years later, her childhood dreams of becoming a fashion designer became a reality.
Launched in 2016, her athletic-wear brand Popflex is an eight-figure business and can also be found in Target stores. Plus, the brand has a very famous fan. During promotion for her “The Tortured Poets Department” album release, Taylor Swift shared a YouTube Short in which she was wearing Popflex’s patented lavender pirouette skort. Within minutes, the lavender skort sold out. Then the pirouette skort sold out in every single color.
“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 said.
It was the best sales day of this year and the company’s second-highest sales date ever.
Between sell-out designs, her blog, and running two eight-figure businesses, Ho still takes time to reflect on her journey and what brought her success today.
“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.”
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com
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