How Showpo’s Jane Lu took radical action to get her $30 million fashion retailer out of a “rut”

A video recently released by founder of prominent fashion retailer Showpo Jane Lu has gone viral over the past two weeks, but not for the usual reasons.

There was no wild sales or hilarious office pranks, and the company’s workers didn’t band together to buy Lu a Tesla. Instead, the video was simply of Lu in front of the camera, admitting she and her team had made some mistakes, and that the company was in a “rut”.

Lu took to social media — addressing Showpo’s more than 2.5 million followers across Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter — to discuss some of the recent issues the business had been facing over the Easter sales period and further into May.

“Businesses are always talking about how well they’re doing,” Lu said.

“But I wanted my vlog to cover the highs and lows, and all that’s in between, because running a business isn’t easy, and we know we’re far from perfect.”

Lu went on to reveal the issues Showpo had recently been facing in the world of customer service, especially throughout its busier sales periods. She highlighted that the company had had some “mini crises”, that had ended up snowballing into much bigger issues, and upsetting the company’s thousands of customers. Read more

Dominic Powell - Smart Company - 25 June 2018