Women2Watch Interview: Jane Lu

Throughout the year, we feature a member of our Women2Watch community, made up of some of the greatest influencers, disruptors, and innovators in retail, finance, and technology. Meet Jane Lu, founder and CEO of Showpo, an Australian online fashion retailer and one of our 2019 Women2Watch honorees!
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In her interview, she gives her honest take on the experiences of failure and switching from a career in finance to creating a business that celebrates women of all sizes across the world.

Who are you, and what do you do?

My name is Jane Lu, I’m Founder and CEO of Showpo, an Australian online fashion retailer! After starting out in my parents garage in 2010, Showpo has now amassed a cult social following of over 3.6 million collective followers and has a team of over 150 across our Sydney based HQ and Distribution Centers. Striving to be the go-to for apparel and accessories for the millennial woman of all sizes.

Tell us about your action towards all different types of body sizes.

For us, it’s really just about understanding our consumer, what she wants and how we can deliver this for her. I think it's important to feel represented and inclusivity is absolutely apart of our identity, but it's definitely something we've had to work towards and are still working on. We started as a pure retailer with no experience in design and eight years ago manufacturers simply weren't producing in a diverse range of sizes. This has been a long-term project for us and over four years ago we started dabbling in design, and diversifying our product range to grow it to fuller size range of  4-20 AU (0 - 16 US). Now, when you jump online at showpo.com not only do you see the size offering but you see two different sized models side by side in the same outfit. This provides context to our consumers,  so they may have a better understanding of how a product may look on different bodies. This is something we are really proud of and we absolutely intend to continue to grow in this space.

How did you get to where you are?

By failing spectacularly! My first foray into fashion (and first business) completely failed.  I had just quit my job in corporate finance to work on the business, and all of a sudden, I found myself, unemployed, in debt with a failed business, in the middle of the global financial crisis. Because of the Global Financial Crisis, there was no way of getting back into the workforce, so I had to start a business. That’s how Showpo was born! 

What advice would you give other Women2Watch?

Don't be afraid of failure but prepare yourself for it. Business is a series of mistakes. If you're not making any mistakes, then you're not taking enough risks. It's really all about how much and how quickly you can learn from your mistakes and bounce back from them. Be careful not to over-invest and over-commit so that when you've made mistakes, you still have the resources to pivot, keep going and use those learnings to improve your business and yourself as a businessperson. 

What are you most excited about looking at 2019?

2019 looks big from where I’m standing! I’m incredibly excited to be diversifying our product offering - expanding into completely new categories that compliment the different stages of our consumers journey with us. We are tiny, baby steps away from opening the doors to our very own retail pop up space in Los Angeles in mid March, which is our first physical brand presence in the US and the first since we made the decision to close our 3 brick and mortar stores in 2013 to optimize towards online. Plenty to be excited and inspired about this year!

Wanna learn more?

Subscribe to Jane Lu's Youtube Channel to get a behind-the-scenes glimpse at how Jane built Showpo and  became one of the biggest fashion influencers in Australia.