‘So many learning curves’: How Popflex founder Cassey Ho turned her Target apparel line into another viral moment

Once revealed, the news — and the collection — quickly went viral. The collection of tops, bottoms, sports bras and more priced between $15 and $40 sold roughly half the inventory across online and physical channels in less than a week of launch.

One of Ho’s videos showing her in front of the display has over 40 million views across her social channels, while videos of fans trying on the clothes and comparing them to Popflex’s original items quickly racked up views. And while Ho had some nerves about how the collection would be perceived, some fans are saying they prefer the new designs and the lower price point. It’s also serving for some as an introduction to Popflex. Sales on Popflex’s site are up 112% year over year since the Blogilates launch.

“We had worked so hard throughout the year, and there were so many problems that we dealt with, and then I started getting really nervous at the end, being like, ‘How are we going to sell all of these units?’ But people came out, so it’s been really cool,” Ho told Modern Retail.

But getting to this point took months of quiet work. As a direct-to-consumer brand, Popflex wasn’t set up to produce the quantity needed for a nationwide Target drop. And there were the designs themselves to figure out. Ho wanted the line to evoke the romantic and girly aesthetic that Popflex is known for but had to source materials that would keep the price point down.

Modern Retail spoke with Ho about the process and launch of the collection. This conversation has been edited for clarity and length.

How did you develop your relationship with Target?
It started with Blogilates Home Workout Equipment that launched December of 2020. It sold out within like a few weeks, so it made all the buyers and everyone really, really happy. [The apparel conversation] did not happen until the Target executive team flew to our Atlanta office [on] January 4th of 2024. We didn’t know for a few weeks if we were going to do it or not, so at that moment, we just had to go so fast and so hard.

What kind of challenges did you and your team encounter in designing the line?
It was extremely difficult, and like running two businesses at the same time — and then doing one on a scale where you’re doing it for like a corporate partner at retail, which we’ve never done before. There were so many learning curves.

Luckily we used base patterns that were already developed from Popflex, which of course, takes like a couple years, and so we already had the fit down, and we made some aesthetic change. Finding the right fabric to get that cost to the right price point was the most difficult part, but I had never produced anything on this scale before.

One thing that was crazy: the tops’ fabric and the bottoms’ fabric are slightly different fiber content. But they have to match, obviously, for a set. I don’t know what happened, but basically, once we had all the yards done, we found out that 57,000 yards of our bottoms’ fabric was slightly more blue than our tops’ fabric. And it was time to start cutting, and we were going to miss this deadline. So, we moved those fabrics over to Popflex; we’ll figure out what to do with that later. And we had to re-weave and re-dye all this fabric. Then we ended up having to airship all those units that were affected to Target on our own dime.

When you’re in retail, they’re hanging right next to each other. If this was for Popflex, we would call this a cool black and this a “black black,” and it would be two different things. But in retail, no, it’s got to match.

Something else that was really difficult for us, too, was that I couldn’t necessarily hire a bigger team right away for two brands because, should this experiment have not worked right, I would have had to potentially lay off people. And that’s something I didn’t want to do. And so, our current team was under a lot of stress trying to get this project out. 

What was your marketing strategy to share the Target collection with your Popflex fans and followers, and how have they responded to the collection?
The marketing has been me filming on my phone and sort of documenting this journey as it happened. A lot of those were not planned. Like, in one, I’m just walking into a store [and] decided to lay down on the floor, and be like, ‘I did it,’ with that TikTok sound.  And it’s been fun because I love making content almost as if I’m blogging. And it’s just so fun to see people responding, and they’re excited because they can go into [the] store and see everything. But some videos were planned, like that history video that I shared [that] was over three minutes long. I had been filming throughout the entire year.

Now, fans and customers are making TikToks walking into the store, trying it on, and there’s been this huge wave — you can’t plan for this. Their videos are going viral, inspiring other people to make videos. And the excitement, in general, is helping us push through so many units.

The other thing is this feels like a community win because some people have been with me since 2009, and they’ve watched me go from making one YouTube video to selling Train Insane shirts and then starting PopFlex and now, having this line at one of the biggest retail stages in the world. And so, for them, they feel like we all did this together.

What are the next steps for both Popflex and the Blogilates for Target brands now that the collection is live?
For sure, being in front of Target was a risk. One, it was a distraction from our main business. Secondly, I did not know if this was going to cannibalize Popflex or not. If it were to cannibalize Popflex, this is not what I should be doing. But, oddly enough, on launch day, we saw a boost in sales on Popflex. You can see that there are like really two different sets of customers who want that same feeling of the design.

And so I think after seeing what has happened over the past few days, we are going to have two brands. Now, whether or not Target wants to continue this, we will find out as soon as this experiment plays out. But I just need to figure out how to do this. Like, how do I literally run two businesses at the same time when it’s a lot of me [doing] the marketing, right? So, as a content creator, I can’t just suddenly double up my content. That’s something I need to figure out.