CEO Jiayu Lin on how PopSockets deepened its relationships with Best Buy, Target and Walmart in 2025
Known for its mobile accessories, PopSockets has been on a mission to evolve into a lifestyle brand.
Earlier this year, the company unveiled a new strategy to utilize retail partners to better reach customers with new products. That kicked off in May with an exclusive new product launch with Best Buy. Then, in October, the company rolled out swappable grips at all 1,800 Target stores. With swappability, shoppers can refresh their PopSockets PopTops with new patterns or colors without purchasing an entirely new base. This fall, PopSockets also launched a storefront on Walmart Marketplace to offer a broader assortment of products not available in the retailer’s stores. Most recently, the company also enabled same-day pickup at Best Buy locations for purchases made on PopSockets’s DTC website.
With the brand having been around since 2010, PopSockets is adapting to new tastes with more modern accessories and designs. This includes new licensed collaborations with IPs like “Stranger Things,” Pokémon and Disney’s “Lilo & Stitch.” As PopSockets CEO Jiayu Lin told Modern Retail, these initiatives are all part of the company’s push to expand unique assortments across its distribution channels. This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
How are your retail partnerships helping you create newness for customers to keep them returning?
“We want to meet consumers where they are to [allow them to] experience the products, while also expanding our online ecosystem. Our retail partnerships with our key partners are a big part of our evolving into a lifestyle brand. That is why we are investing in new launches with Target, Best Buy and Walmart.
The Target swappability initiative is part of that. Ever since 2018, all the grips’ tops have been swappable, but the majority of consumers didn’t know about that, and it was challenging to communicate that benefit. So, we did a full reset of our space shelf with Target for our Maxi bases and expanded the offering of PopTops. This helps consumers get into our offering through a lower price point and then add the swappable tops. So far, it’s working. Since we launched the new PopTop adhesive assortment, sales have doubled, and the PopGrip MagSafe line has maintained year-over-year sales growth at Target.”
You launched a major new product with Best Buy this year and now use the retailer as a buy-online, pick-up in-store point. How has this particular partnership helped you reach a new type of customer?
“Best Buy is a growing business for us this year, and we’ve had very exciting achievements with the Best Buy team. This year, we launched our new product, Kick-Out Grip & Stand, as a Best Buy exclusive. And now, with the holidays, we are supporting buy-online, pick-up in-store through Best Buy, which is particularly handy as we push some last-minute gift shopping and face shipping cutoffs. At this point, we are investing in marketing with Best Buy, as well as influencer and social content to promote BOPIS. We’re also sending email blasts to our own consumer base to highlight this partnership and direct traffic there.”
Most recently in November, you officially created your own store on Walmart Marketplace. How does this program differ from your existing distribution with Walmart?
“Walmart is a longstanding partner of ours. And compared to other retailers, Walmart is particularly strong in its online marketplace, which has large assortments while also offering [delivery] speed and convenience. With the goal of deepening the partnership with Walmart, we collaboratively decided to expand our Marketplace offering to drive newness to Walmart. We plan on launching 15 new collections on Walmart Marketplace to bring the catalog in line with PopSockets’s own DTC site. The Walmart Marketplace assortment will grow 2.5X by February 2026. We are seeing lots of early holiday momentum, and sales are doubling week-to-week.”
How else are you hoping to tap into newness as you expand into more lifestyle categories?
“We also have plans to open our own retail stores in 2026. We have had success with our stores in Asia — in China, specifically. The idea is to have our own space where we can showcase a large offering, similar to a jewelry or candy store, but for mobile accessories. We are also going to keep pushing more into collaborations, like with our recent Bookish collection and our Kindle accessories that we launched over the summer. The retail strategy, both online and offline, will help us bring these to our consumers by meeting them where they are.”