For a lot of Aussie women, their first “proper” going‑out dress came stuffed into a Showpo parcel that turned up on the doorstep right before pre‑drinks. Jane Lu is the woman behind that box: founder and CEO of Showpo, self‑described Lazy CEO, podcaster and now a Shark on Shark Tank Australia. She’s the ex‑accountant who bailed on spreadsheets, lied to her parents about quitting her job, and somehow turned a garage side hustle into a global fashion brand with a culty online following.
For our latest episode of Insider Trading, we spoke to the Showpo founder about late starts, immigrant parents, COVID chaos, girlboss discourse and what it really means to build a brand (and yourself) in public.
The chat has been edited lightly for length and clarity, but all of Jane’s answers are in her own words — tangents, pranks and all.
Tell us a little bit about yourself and what you do.
Well, I’m Jane, the founder and CEO of Showpo. My role is a bit of a mixed bag. We’ll go from having a strategy and growth meeting with our leadership team, and the next minute we’re filming office talks with the team, or managing influencer relationships and things like PR, as the face of a brand in a way.
I also have what almost feels like a side hustle of having a podcast and a personal brand, so it’s just juggling lots of balls at once.
How would you describe a typical day for you, from wake‑up to clock‑off?
I’m definitely not a morning person. Today I woke up at like 8am, which is so early for me — 8:30 or 9:00 is my ideal time. The other day I was like, ‘Oh my God, my neighbours started construction early’, and when I woke up it was probably 10:00am.
Every day is different. Today we’re in the office and it’s pretty chaotic and pretty much all day is back‑to‑back meetings and sign‑offs and content moments.
Other days, if I’m at home and working from home, I’ll get up at 9am, jump into my first meeting and be a potato for nine hours and not move. I’ll get UberEats delivered and it’ll be so boring and stagnant. If there was a “day in the life” video about working from home it’d just be like… nothing.
Then some days I’ve got my podcast, The Lazy CEO Podcast. I get to talk to really exciting entrepreneurs. That’s kind of my growth‑hack way to meet exciting people — you actually get to go and approach people you want to talk to.
How long have you actually been doing this for?
I’ve been doing Showpo for 15 years. I used to be an accountant. I’ve always been the CEO, it’s just that the team has gotten bigger and the responsibilities have gotten bigger.
On the podcast and personal branding side, that’s probably been more in recent times as well. So it’s more plates to juggle, but it’s fun because it brings out the creative side and it’s almost like having a little startup baby to play with.
What’s your favourite part about what you do?
My favourite part is that I get to be creative every day. What’s funny is I never thought of myself as a creative person. I studied accounting and finance. I went to a selective school, so they kind of make you think being creative is only art and music and drama, as opposed to just thinking outside the box. I never thought of myself as creative because I like maths.
But with the business there are always challenges. You can’t copy and paste someone else’s strategy. You always have to be creative, think outside the box and take risks. You get to work with other people who are also creative and aligned and want to do cool things, and actually drive growth and change and see the impact of what you do.
I think the fact that it’s e‑commerce is what I really love. It’s kind of like a game. You get to pull levers and see what happens and you get more instant gratification in e‑comm than in any other industry. You can roll out a campaign or change a budget and see the impact.
It’s kind of like Lemonade Tycoon. You have the lemonade stand and you’re like, ‘How much lemon?’ or ‘It’s going to rain, let’s…’ I like that, but at scale.
You’ve had such a long journey with lots of switches and levers. What’s been the biggest learning curve so far?
It’s probably a bit boring because I don’t think anyone wants to talk about COVID anymore, but going through COVID was really big.
We were on such an amazing trajectory and it kind of just spun everything 180.
Every entrepreneur probably realises at some point that you are not invincible, and I think that was the moment during COVID when I realised, ‘Wow, I could actually lose everything’.
It was also the first time I was properly working with my husband in the business, and we still don’t work very well together without a bit of bickering. That was a learning curve as well, because we had to navigate that together.
What did COVID look like specifically for an e‑commerce business like yours?
Just before COVID we’d decided, ‘We’re going to go hard on party and occasion wear’.
We cancelled our activewear and loungewear ranges because we were like, ‘We need to just focus’. That was definitely the wrong move, but who was to know, right?
It took time to fix the product range. In the meantime, you start discounting what you can’t sell, you get into promos and discounts and markdowns, and you end up in this discount cycle and discount trap.
I still see lots of entrepreneurs get into that, and a lot of COVID‑successful businesses ended up there because they overbought.
Fixing that — getting out of the discount cycle — was hard. Fixing our stock position then fixes your cash balance, which is really important. It’s important but a bit boring.
In the end it made us a much more robust business.
You’ve gone from a laptop in your parents’ garage to a global fashion business and being on Shark Tank. When did it actually click that you’d “made it”?
Everyone asks, ‘When did you feel your first moment of success?’ and that’s more monetary, like being able to pay off my parents’ mortgage.
But the moment when I realised I’m one of the Australian faces of entrepreneurship — that’s different. I remember looking at my husband one night after we won Australia’s Online Retailer of the Year and going, “Are you fucking kidding me”?
We’d beaten big businesses, and we were being featured on a list amongst Bunnings and Kmart. When you see your name alongside the big retail giants you grew up with at 15, and now you’re comparable with them and listed in the same field, that’s crazy.
You’ve talked before about being the child of Chinese‑Australian parents and doing the “good migrant kid” thing of going into accounting. What did it take to unlearn that script and back yourself as a founder?
I don’t really know what I did mentally. I think all entrepreneurs have to be a bit naïve. The naivety in me just thought it was so exciting and assumed, ‘If we get this many customers coming in, surely 10 per cent of them will buy, and then we’ll sell a few of these and of course we’ll make money’.
Obviously all those assumptions were wrong. On opening day of the first business we barely broke even. But that naïvety of having that first business kept me going, and being so excited, and realising the high I’d get from having my own business versus going into finance.
I have to say I was really, really bad at my [accounting] job. If I was actually good at my job I probably would have stayed. Thank God I was bad at it, because it doesn’t feel good to be bad at anything. I felt like I was walking on eggshells, didn’t really know what I was doing and was like, ‘They’re going to find out any minute now’.
It made the leaving process easier. The moment I quit, I was trying to remove a circular reference from a spreadsheet for three hours. I fixed it and thought, ‘Oh my God, that made no difference to my life whatsoever’!
Not that I think we’re saving lives now, but at least we make lots of girls feel great and confident.
As an immigrant you think of that job as financial security and that’s all you want for your family because they’ve got a mortgage. But all of a sudden I looked at that financial stability as almost like a prison sentence. ‘Accountant Jane’ in 40 years looked more grim than secure, and that’s when I decided to back myself.
What kept me going was that I’d quit my job for that business, and then my business partner kind of fucked me over a little bit and decided she didn’t want to do it anymore. She was secretly job‑hunting, going back into corporate, and suddenly I had a failed business and no job.
I hadn’t told my parents I’d quit my job. I was living at home and pretending to go to work. So the thing that kept me going was, ‘I need to make the business successful before I can tell them’.
It’s really hard for an entrepreneur to keep going when you’re already second‑guessing yourself — as a founder, you’re always second‑guessing yourself. If you’ve got parents going, “Have you made it yet? Are you successful yet? When are you going to get a job again?” that’s another voice. I already had the voices in my head I was trying to mute so I could listen to the voice of reason and keep going. I didn’t need them in my ear as well, so it was easier not to tell them.
Do you feel like, now that Showpo has blown up, people read you differently in a boardroom or on Shark Tank because you’re a woman of colour in fashion?
Now, definitely, doors open more easily and I love it. It’s great.
Early on, I was definitely underestimated. I remember being in a meeting with someone on my team who’s an older male, and someone comes in to pitch and just focuses the whole pitch on the man because they think he’s the boss and I work for him.
Maybe that gave me a chip on my shoulder, but it also makes you want to work harder to prove them wrong — “them” collectively, not that specific person.
In corporate there’s definitely more of a bamboo and glass ceiling. On the entrepreneurial side you’re behind the computer and you can prove yourself silently. You don’t really have to play the corporate roles and climb the corporate ladder in that rat race where you’ve got that bamboo and glass ceiling.
What’s your relationship like with the wider Australian fashion community? Do you feel like Showpo is welcomed at the table
Yeah, I think so. I think we are.
When we were starting we probably weren’t taken as seriously. But over the last 15 years, I think some traditional businesses have realised we’re… we’re not just a phase.
We were one of the first brands to do occasion wear at the price point we have. We did workwear at that price point. We were one of the first brands of our size to do extended sizing back in 2016. We were one of the first I know of in Australia to do affordable wedding dresses back in about 2019.
We did all these really cool firsts and we were always social‑led, which gave us a lot of respect. We’re proof you don’t need traditional fashion gatekeepers to build at scale and have impact.
Showpo built its name on being fun, trend‑driven and accessible, which puts you in the fast fashion conversation. How do you personally sit with that label?
I think fast fashion has different levels. There’s fast fashion where you hit trends fast, and fast fashion where you mass‑produce and have hits and misses and end up wasting product.
We’re not a brand that focuses on micro‑trends. We focus on products that last. I don’t see our quality as lower than brands that don’t call themselves fast fashion.
We’ve definitely focused on quality and fit so much more as we’ve grown and been able to hire more experienced people in garment tech and design. We’re not focused on the tiny micro‑trends. We want pieces to last and sit more alongside the not‑fast‑fashion brands — we just try to bring that at a more affordable price point.
Gen Z is pretty sustainability‑ and ethics‑minded with fashion. How do you speak to that audience with Showpo and your content?
We use more and more sustainable fabrics and we definitely talk about that and showcase it on our website. Ethical sourcing is a big focus too — auditing and working with factories that have best practice.
In terms of content, we show lots of different ways to style the same piece. That’s a big one for targeting a Gen Z audience and showing it’s not just a one‑wear occasion.
You’ve built Showpo and The Lazy CEO in a very public way. What advice or warning would you give people who want to build their business and personal brand in public?
Everyone is worried about putting themselves in public because you don’t want to be cringey and you don’t know what your friends or people from high school are going to say about you.
You also don’t want to lose your customers in case they don’t resonate with you, because if you put a mirror up to yourself you see the worst things about yourself that other people probably don’t even see.
But building a business publicly and having a personal profile has helped my business so much. In this day and age, technology has democratised how easy it is for anyone to start a business.
In the day and age of where technology and AI are going, the only thing you have that’s defensible about you and your business is yourself, because that’s the only really unique thing left that you can’t replicate. So I think this is the most important thing you could be building, which is your brand.
Do you think women cop more flak for being visible online? How do you navigate that?
Definitely. Women overall just get judged more harshly. People criticise their tone, their appearance, if they’re too confident or not confident enough.
You get the bros and you get the Karens, both sides scrutinising everything you do. Online scrutiny really amplifies everything. One comment can be dissected so far and built on, and one negative comment can negate a hundred amazing comments.
It’s definitely tough, but for me I just try not to venture too long in the comments section. As a female founder, your personal brand gets tied to the business in a way that men don’t necessarily experience, in my opinion.
It’s about separating the feedback from the noise — what’s actually customer feedback versus just someone from the dark side of the internet when you go viral. The goal isn’t to be universally liked; it’s to be clear and value‑led and consistent.
The word “girlboss” has followed a lot of women in business. Do you see that label as empowering, cringe, or something else entirely?
I grew up kind of admiring the Nasty Gal business. I remember building Showpo at the time and realising Sophia Amoruso existed. I grew up in that millennial era of being like, “Yeah, girlboss”.
There hasn’t really been another term. When I want to refer to women in business, no one’s come up with anything better. I understand why people don’t like the term — “Why can’t you just be [a] boss?”
But that’s why I’ve got the business group Like Minded Bitches Drinking Wine. Why does being “bitches” need to be bad? Why is “girl” bad? Yes, “girlboss”, great.
I feel like it’s all about intent and we should own it. I love being a girlboss.
When a 16‑year‑old girl discovers you on TikTok, what do you secretly hope sticks with her?
That you don’t have to fit a mould to be successful.
I didn’t grow up with girls like me on TV — especially on Shark Tank, and not for business success. To be able to be that for other people is amazing.
On TikTok we can reach that generation. I want to show that you don’t have to have experience when you start, you don’t have to have your shit together and everything can be messy, but we’re just going to keep going forward one step at a time.
What advice do you have for people who want to work in your industry or type of role?
I’d say definitely just start getting experience. Experience is the most important thing.
Even in finance I worked as a cadet from when I was 18 at KPMG. Get your foot in the door and then show how hardworking you are. We’ve had people who come in as interns and have worked their way up to managers.
It’s all about experience and showing how proactive you can be. It’s so obvious when someone is proactive and cares and thinks outside the box. Going into e‑comm or a startup is the best place for that.
If someone wants to start a business and they don’t have a business idea, I think going into a startup where it’s still small — like when there’s 10 people — and you can work directly with the founder while they’re still making decisions and quick mistakes and learning from them, being involved in that is huge. Especially if the founder has a personal brand, because then you can learn from that side as well.
If I was giving 18‑year‑old Jane advice, that’s what I’d say.
If you weren’t doing your current job, what would you be doing?
I used to say I would love to be a sitcom writer or reality TV show producer, working behind the scenes of TV.
Do you have a work uniform?
I like to wear blazers and a short skirt or shorts. Matching set. I’m doing it now.
What’s the most unhinged thing you’ve seen at work that we can legally publish?
Oh, legally! I keep thinking… probably some prank.
We did this Showpo April Fools’ prank ages ago. People kept asking, “When are you going to open a men’s range? When are you going to do men’s?” So we were like, “Yeah, we’re going to do it.” We launched Showbro, and then on April Fools’ we came out and were like, “It’s a joke!”
I have another one. Before I had my first baby, I did a prank on everyone and pretended my water broke — even to my husband. My husband was freaking out. It was just OH&S and HR and my husband all freaking out the most.
Who do you admire in your industry?
Definitely Jo Horgan from Mecca. She’s been amazing.
In that learning‑curve stage, I remember going through a tough time and she and her husband invited us to their house for dinner. They work together and he joined her business after the same amount of time, with a finance background, so we felt… seen. It was the pep talk me and my husband needed to get through the tough times. Definitely her.
Describe your inbox in three words.
“Managed chaos” — there’s a bunch of folders with no system, but the unread emails are low.
How do you sign off your emails?
“Thanks”, “X”, you know. It’s more the out‑of‑office that’s fun.
At Christmas I had, “If you think this is urgent, it’s probably not. I’m behind the Great Firewall of China”. I love that one. The millennial in me also has Simpsons emojis.
“Feel free to email noreply@lazyceo.com.”
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