GO FOR IT — The incredible story of Showpo CEO Jane Lu!
How many of us think of leaving our cubicle job daily? Maybe 9 out of 10! How many of us think to leave a job to start something on our own? Maybe 7 out of 10! How many of us will do it? Not sure! But, Showpo lazy CEO, Jane Lu has done it amazingly. She took the failure on her shoulder starting from parent’s garage to a $3.5 million global fashion brand. The question is, how did she do it?
Unsurprisingly, fashion is the powerhouse sector in the world, especially in Australia. Forbes magazine states that Australia’s fashion industry drives $9.2 billion in retail sales and employs 77,000 people across the country. However, the industry is taken over by online platforms and strict marketing strategies that provide high local competition from global brands in Australia.
These facts did not demotivate Ms Jane from following her dream of building a global fashion brand house.
Ms Jane is born on June 12, 1986, in a traditional Chinese family. She is the only child of her Chinese parents. She grew up in Sydney, Australia where her parents were immigrants. Her parents suffered a lot in Australia to put Ms Jane into a good school. They worked in factories and as cleaners to support the family. Her parents wanted Ms Jane to do well in her academics and get a good job to be financially stable. And she did exactly that, Ms Jane studied bachelors in commerce majoring in accounting and finance. And she got an immediate offer from KPMG for cadetship program. It was everything she and her parents had expected for her.
Eventually, she started drifting away from her job and found a friend who was ready to offer her a business opportunity to work for. She took the opportunity immediately as she mentioned to creator lab that, ‘She hated the job and wanted to leave before they fire me’.
She and her friend started a business of pop up stores in bars which were not successful and faced a huge failure. She mentioned, ‘lack of experience, money and no marketing ideas led us to failure’. And her friend dropped out of the plan and Ms Jane was left with a lot of debt, no job and middle of the global financial crisis.
There was no option left for Ms Jane at that time. How could she do then? She did exactly what she had to. She buckled up and came up with the idea of e-retailing. She did lie to her parents for 2 years and pretended to go to her regular job. Ms Jane told in an interview that, ‘what drove her the most to do the business is to prove people wrong. This is what most of us go through and our dreams are cracked’.
But without money, how she physically started it?
She took products from wholesalers on a consignment basis which means she doesn’t have to pay until the product is sold. She made her parent’s garage as her office and started packing orders from there. However, she had to rebrand ‘Showpony’ to ‘Showpo’ as the name was already an existing American brand. Eventually, in 2012, Showpo was a million-dollar company with only four staff. In 2014 it was $10 million and in 2017 it reached $30 million. She took baby steps in making her business a successful global brand.
But it did not come to her easily as said. She had to pack orders by herself and take the bus to reach the destination as she couldn’t afford it back then.
Ms Jane said, ‘I tried to save even $12 after making $16 000 on a Christmas sale as it was a break and make the moment for me’.
What gave the kick to her business and erase the failure?
In an interview, Ms Jane mentioned three factors that have been the key elements which helped Showpo reach the level where it is today, ‘Definitely luck, timing and increasing demand of social media in the back 2010’. The competitive advantage for Showpo has been the social media presence mainly over Instagram, Facebook and YouTube.
She added that ‘biggest mistake is hiring the wrong people’. A team of efficient people always makes the work easier and her business is successful because she could put the right people in the right place.
With all the failures and sacrifices Ms Jane has built this empire with passion, love and sacrifice. In 2016, she was listed in ‘Asia 30 under 30’ and as of today she has bagged many awards including the title of, ‘Cosmopolitan’s Entrepreneur of the year in 2015’.
In March 2019, Showpo entered the USA market with their first pop up store in LA. The journey has been incredible and extraordinary for MS. Jane and Showpo but at a cost of failures and sacrifices.
In an interview to news.com, Ms Jane said, ‘For me, had I not failed at doing this I would have ended up working for a brand like Showpo. But even if I fail at Showpo now, I feel it would have been worth the experience and journey. So, just go for it’.
Her inspiring story creates a sensation in our brain and heart to just ‘GO FOR IT’.
Hear from the CEO herself how to deal with failure and to move on with key learnings from it
