A Chinese girl quit her job at the age of 24 to start a business and created a big brand with an annual income of over $100 million

If she had not chosen to start her own business, Jane Lu ( hereinafter referred to as " Jane " ) might still be working in a seemingly stable but actually boring and dull job: wearing a business suit and carrying a laptop bag , rushing from home to a high-end office building in the city to work day after day ...

However, when she was on the verge of collapse at work, Jane decided to quit her job without telling her parents and start her own business. After experiencing many twists and turns, she founded the world-renowned clothing brand Showpo, and sold her clothing to countries around the world through this online shopping platform. She successfully went from being heavily in debt to having an annual income of over $100 million.

The entrepreneurial story of this Chinese girl continues to inspire thousands of e-commerce practitioners.

Jane quit her job without telling her parents and started her own business in her garage

Public information shows that Jane is now the founder and CEO of Showpo, an online fashion retail company . In addition to running a business worth hundreds of millions of dollars, she is also a judge on "Australia's Shark Tank". On TikTok, she has nearly 110,000 fans.

Speaking of the reason why Jane started her own business, it can actually be traced back to her childhood.

Jane immigrated to Australia from China with her parents when she was eight years old. At that time, she was the only foreigner in the school who could not speak English and did not know how to ask for help when she wanted to go to the bathroom. In order to make a living in the new country, her parents even worked as cleaners in other students' homes.

This life, which is very different from that of her peers, has made Jane extremely competitive since she was a child, and there has always been some kind of motivation that drives her forward.

In her freshman year, Jane was admitted to the world-renowned KPMG accounting firm with excellent grades. Two and a half years later, she moved to Ernst & Young to work in corporate finance. By chance, she learned about a pop-up store called "Fat Boye Group" from a friend, which aroused her strong interest. After that, she started running the physical pop-up store "Fat Boye" and used her parents' garage as a storage room for all business supplies.

Working during the day and doing a side job at night, this lifestyle made Jane feel that she was particularly passionate about running a business, so she became increasingly dissatisfied with the boring work in the company, and even regarded it as "imprisonment". In addition, after the financial crisis, companies laid off employees one after another, causing her work to become extremely heavy. After a spreadsheet crashed, Jane suddenly realized, "Oh my God, I only have one life, and I actually wasted three hours doing a meaningless thing just to delete a circular reference!"

In June 2010, Jane finally quit her job, but she didn't dare tell her parents that she quit to work in the pop-up store, so she decided to keep it a secret for the time being. After that, Jane still got up very early every day, put on a business suit, had breakfast with her parents, and then went to the city with her mother to "pretend to go to work." After her mother went to work, Jane would sneak back and spend the whole day working at Fat Boye.

From $60,000 in debt to $100 million in annual income, Jane successfully turned her life around

However, things did not go as planned. Although Jane put all her heart and soul into Fat Boye, the company's performance was terrible. After her partner left, Jane also lost confidence in running a business. In July 2010, Fat Boye was officially closed.

“ After closing Fat Boye, I found myself $60,000 in debt from student loan arrears and business losses. It was during the global financial crisis and I couldn’t find any job. I admitted I had failed and felt ashamed and depressed about it ,” Jane recalls.

Two months later, Jane was still unemployed. Later, a friend introduced her to a partner who was engaged in online fashion retail. When she met with her partner for the third time, they established the brand name "Show Pony" and established a website under this name.

Show Pony was born in September 2010 with just a few pieces of clothing, a website and a humble Facebook page. Jane chose to sell online first when running Show Pony because of her previous failure experience.

More than a year after the company was founded, the partner chose to withdraw due to poor performance. Jane bought her shares and became the sole owner of Show Pony. In the first month of running the company alone, the company's sales doubled to $9,000 per month. Two years later, its turnover soared directly to $1 million.

In February 2013, Jane closed the physical store and devoted herself to the online store. She changed the brand name from "Show Pony" to "Showpo", and sales began to rise. Jane proudly shared, "Now the sales in one day are more than my previous annual salary. "

After his business became successful, Showpo decided to share the good news with his parents, bought them a new car, and helped them pay off all their mortgages.

Currently, Showpo has developed into one of the world's largest online fashion retailers, with more than 3.5 million fans on social media platforms and selling products to millions of users . Among them, the number of fans of the official Instagram account is well over 1 million, the number of fans on Facebook is more than 650,000, and the number of fans on TikTok is close to 200,000.

Entering the Showpo official website, you can see that it covers multiple product categories such as wedding dresses, one-piece dresses, coats, sweaters, jeans, earrings, hair accessories, bags, etc. It has more than 80 local and international brands, and clothing sizes range from 4 to 20 (0 to 16 in the United States), which can basically meet the needs of female consumers.

Relevant data shows that as early as 2019, Showpo's total revenue reached 85 million US dollars, and now its annual revenue has exceeded 100 million US dollars, which can be said to be a beautiful turnaround.

Many factors contributed to Showpo's success

Looking back at Jane’s entrepreneurial story, it is not difficult to find that her success is inseparable from Jane’s courage to try and fail.

Jane's personal social media account is often used to provide advice to people who dream of starting a business, and the content of the video is centered around "Don't be afraid of making mistakes." Jane pointed out, "I like to compare entrepreneurship to golf. First, we know that the ball should be hit in the direction of the hole. Just like when starting an e-commerce business, we must first establish a general direction. I am heading towards fashion apparel."

Secondly, Showpo’s soaring sales are inseparable from the support of social media platforms.

At the beginning of its establishment, its founder Jane decided to focus on developing online marketing. Not only did she close the physical store and devote all her energy to online, she also opened official accounts on well-known social media platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, etc., and continued to attract fans by posting videos of outfits, atmosphere, fun, and flat displays. While expanding her popularity, she also increased the number of product orders.

In addition, Showpo has grown from a small Australian business to a global fashion brand because it has put a lot of effort into clothing design.

Showpo has a variety of clothing styles, ranging from daily wear to wedding dresses. According to the official website, its mission is to make everyone look confident and beautiful no matter what the occasion. The brand also pays special attention to the fit, fabric quality, and print design of clothing to ensure that everyone can find a product that satisfies them. Therefore, it is widely loved by female consumers around the world.

The same is true for other companies or sellers. The courage to try and fail, product selection direction, marketing strategy, product advantages, etc. are all indispensable on the road to e-commerce entrepreneurship.