How 32 Year Old Migrant Built 32 Million Dollar Fortune With Showpo

Jane Lu, the self-made Australian millionaire, geared her business in 2010. Her online shopping platform, Showpo, was started at a small-scale in her parent’s garage. She has been ranked 16th in the list of young entrepreneurs of Australia. Her extreme passion for business and entrepreneurial startups led her to escape from her cubicle life. She is internationally acknowledged for her optimistic stands for women empowerment in businesses. Her Instagram name, Lazy CEO, is absolutely contrary to her personality and work life. Her qualities of pioneer skills, high determination, and enthusiasm elevated Showpo to dynamic peaks of success. By being active in retailing and capitalizing social media, the brand has a separate fan base of over 3.5 million on social websites.

 

She has paid a tribute to Australia by playing a significant role in boosting the business industry and economy at large as the Australian startup history is pretty gloomy. 57% of the business sector in Australia was transformed by the endeavor and investments of the immigrants. In days of 1990s, the economy was suffering from severe political upheavals and awful recession periods. Many dynamic and wealthy entrepreneurial businesses were sunk in sea of debts and losses. Citing some of them specifically, PocketMail, 99dresses, and Davnet were the richest startups that failed mercilessly. According to the researches made later, the early period of Australian startups was lacking investments and funding. Poor business strategies and dearth of talented human resource compelled the owners to shut the door of their businesses. Likewise, Lu suffered much jaw-dropping crises when her first business failed spectacularly. 

However, Lu’s consistent endeavors and zealous attitude assisted in establishing the worth 32 million dollars online fashion brand. Showpo now hosts its servicing of products to 80 different countries. The main products of this fashion empire are homewares, pet accessories, beauty products, casual floral clothing, inflatable pool toys, playsuits, informal rompers, and reusable cups. All the products are defined, high-quality, and reasonable. She serves 2000 different types of clothing and styles. 

The Gemini businesswoman, Jane Lu, was born on 12 June 1986 in Australia. Her father was an engineer and her mother a banker in China. She emigrated from Beijing to Sydney at the tender age of eight. Being the only child, she is an apple of the eye to her family. She did her schooling from Sydney Girls’ High institute and stood at the high division in her HSC exams. She earned her graduation in Bachelors in Commerce in the majors of Finance and Accounting from the prestigious University of New South Wales. She received an appreciation award and prize for her training at the famous accounting firm, the Big Four. From the timeline of 2007 to 2009, she worked as an analyst at Ernst and Young. She quitted this job and join his friend’s fashion venture, Fatboye, on a partnership basis. She always had an entrepreneurial mindset which made her dislike a typical office and corporate lifestyle. 

Unfortunately, Fatboye received massive decline. She wandered on the streets and wonder what to do next. Her versatile personality saved her from getting into a trap of failure and depression. Instead, the worked on forming something innovative and captivating for feminine fashion services. By that time, she realized the gap of online clothing services for female and lack of online dresses shops as she says, “I really felt that there was a market gap there,” she says. Once in a meetup with a business partner in State Libra Showpo, a fashion clothing startup idea came into her mind. Initially, with zero funds, she herself designed the clothing website by learning the web designing tutorial on YouTube. She named the brand ‘SHOWPO’. She on set her first bricks-and-mortar retail in the street of Sydney’s Broadway. He first official brand cloth was priced at A$1000 for sale.

With a portable laptop and a few shelves of clothes in the garage, her journey of triumphs took steps. Soon she opened new stores in Pitt Street and Bondi Westfield shopping Centre which provided her the chance of maximizing her profits from $5k, to $40k, to $75k, to $140k and the counter is still running. At the end of 2012, she opted to separate her shares in the business from her business partner and took the charge as the sole head. She added, “Once I took over, I was able to do whatever I wanted.” To increase brand awareness and drive sales, she offered full discounts on shipping charges. She used the marketing strategies of Facebook and Google ads, flawless customer servicing and regular social postings. To spread her business across the globe. In a limited time span, she flourished amazingly as in 2012, she earned one million dollars with a team of just four staff. 

In 2014, the sales were boosted to over $10 million and continued accelerating to $25 million in 2016. Her hard work led her online fashion empire became worth more than A$30 million in 2017. She was debuted in the list of wealthy businesswomen by Australian Financial Review. She appreciated herself by saying, “So many people said I couldn't do it and thought I was an idiot for giving up my great corporate job in the middle of the GFC, so it was spite to prove them wrong”. In August 2017, she officially launched the Showpo’s retail in the US, in Los Angeles. She owns 17 retails with the groundbreaking record of revenue of $800,000 in the previous year.  Lu quoted her struggles in spoken form as “Work hard and play hard – Give everything you’ve got, always.” 

She is the queen of a crowded fan base on social media. She holds a population of more than 1.3 million followers on the Instagram account, The Lazy CEO, and 1.07 million followers on Facebook. Her creative approach accelerated the process of becoming the quintessential boss and internet sensation.

This self-made entrepreneur and founder of Showpo holds a significant position in the youngster’s Australia’s startup list. She earned prestigious and ever-green numerous awards like the title of Cosmopolitan’s Entrepreneur of the Year in 2015. In 2016, she was mentioned in Forbes in the category of under the 30. Recently, she was successfully nominated for awards like Pearcey Tech Entrepreneur Award in 2016, SmartCompany Hot under 30 in 2015, and BRW Fast Starters in 2014.

Alongside, she also combated many series of obstacles in her journey of developing Showpo. She faced the severe financial crisis and debt of A$60,000. Recently, she met a data breach dispute with an online brand, Black Swallow, for the illegal misusage of the entire customer database.

 

The former groovy EY analyst defined the start of her business in words, “kind of all just happened by accident”. Her strong annual revenue profile clearly reflects her well strategic firm.

The social media obsessed businesswoman urges brands to not neglect the significance of social platform for driving leads. It has changed the algorithm of running businesses. It is a form of free and effective advertising, hence an adequate portion of the budget should be dedicated to digital marketing. She marveled the ins and outs of social media usage for boosting businesses. She focuses on the right directions of strategies, goals, and targets to let the work run inflow. If the plan and implementation of running the business are not in order then the passion, money, and time will go in waste. “Start with a minimum viable product.”

 “Hiring the wrong people: that can really screw you over,” Lu says. Her emphasis is on working with a rightly trained team. She wants to spread the vibe of collaborative effort instead of dictatorship in working. She let her team involved in the decision-making process to make their careers excel as she said, “I think it’s really important in this industry to be agile”. She believes in hiring the right people at the right time in the right place and let them do their things on their own. She suggests shortening the lengths of contracts with vendors and third party. She also credited her team in the interview by saying, “Showpo wouldn’t be where it is today without such an incredible team!”

She has collaborated with the high profile social media celebrities like the Sydney-based model, Pia Muehlenbeck. This makes her achieve indelible approaches of digital influencing.

 

She produced the concept of scalable business where the business and entrepreneur work bi-dimensionally to grow the business and in return, the business pays back. 

She calls her customers a treasure. Lu says, “You need to be selling what customers actually want”. She is determined to satisfy her fans with best and quality products. She works according to the target market and the respective requirements of the customers which changes according to the country and cultures. Lu’s all-time favorite saying is, “Harden up; get over it. This is the risk, this is why you do what you do.’

Lu’s positive mindset and philanthropy services make her sparkle among others. To cite, the samples worn during a shoot were sold and the amount collected was donated in the program of The Hunger Project Australia, a non-profitable organization, which works for ameliorating poverty in Africa and other suffered parts of the world. She is entitled among the female-led startup's list because her brand is widely acknowledged globally with over 33000 active members.

She is commended for forming a business group known as “Like Minded Bitches Drinking Wine" in August 2015. It works for empowering and promoting female leader across the globe. The program has helped an enormous ratio of the females in turning them to a boss. She received appreciation as the traction increased to 80,000+ members internationally. She holds annual sessions in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, LA, and San Francisco. About this group, she added in her interview, "There are so many inspiring women kicking serious goals and having women like that to look up to is something that's come a long way since I started."

Jane is also a part of women empowerment groups like LMBDW. She highlights the need for women promotion in the business and industry by supporting other women. She is in support of breaking the stigma of female leaders and against the stereotypical mindset for female CEOS. 

She is also a motivational speaker and inspiration to a number of women in the world. She clearly passes the message of working enthusiastically to achieve the goals. She is a perfect definition of glow-getter. She transformed the thinking of the world about female leaders by being a champion female entrepreneur.

 

The business’s assets will elevate to A$100 by 2020, predictably. She is tirelessly working to make her business among the best and top online destination for female clothing and accessories. Her millennial clothing brand is not just a business to earn profit and fame, instead, it is a complete fashion ecosystem for women where they can enjoy all bits of distinct styling in the world. It is a common platform of connecting females belonging to different tribes, traditions, and lifestyles. Her golden words, "So I think just go and do it because there's nothing worse than waking up and being in your 40s and realizing you didn't try", build enough strength in a person to struggle and take the risk of turning their dreams into a reality. From her empire of zero investment to a growth of 60 million dollars, one can learn precious lessons of saving a failing business as she always emphasized the idea of reinventing the wheel. She has dreamt of exceeding to $100M Australian dollars revenue by 2020 with no external financial support.