ShowPo : Massive Success of A Homegrown Brand Along with Rising of The Social Media Jeannie Octaviani - 00158822T 1475 Words
Introduction ShowPo is an Australian e-retail phenomenon founded in September 2010 by former business analyst Jane Lu. ShowPo is one of Australia’s fastest growing and most successful women’s online retailers with more than 10 million turn over and is currently selling to over 50 countries worldwide. With more than 1.3 million active followers in Instagram and Facebook channel, ShowPo’s exponential growth is driven through their large and growing social media community. Their social media branding has become the biggest competitive advantage which affect the massive growth of the business.
Top Picture : www.showpo.com website as their main e-commerce channel Left Picture : Jane Lu, 31 years old founder of ShowPo, now working as CEO
Target Audience ShowPo’s customer are 16 to 28 years old millennials who are fashion forward, tech savvy and confident. ShowPo is a brand millennial girls want to look like and be like. ShowPo’s customers aren’t only buying clothes, but they are also enjoying the same lifestyle and connecting with a community based on similar values. Inside their social media, ShowPo’s are continuously uploading on-point graphic pictures all about it-girls, party clothes, beautiful places and fluffy animals – things girls nowadays are interested to. Every post has been targeted to what the consumer likes, wants, thinks about and importantly, shares on social media. ShowPo wants their customer to feel confident wearing something gorgeous and comfortable. ShowPo are loved by their million fans by providing up and coming trends to be accessible and affordable while making the brand to be fun and relatable to their customers – called The Club Pony.
Statistical Numbers Instagram : 1.3 million followers | Average 5000 likes Facebook : 1 million followers | Average 1000 likes & shares Youtube : 57,908 subscribers | 3 million plus video views Snapchat : more than 4,000 views per snap Pinterest : 5,422 followers Number of Staff : 30 staffs Revenue : $10 million a year
Brand Development Strategies During the early days of ShowPo, the founder Jane Lu carefully managed the cost of marketing and scale means ShowPo’s margins are “good", even though most of the items sold are averagely priced only around $70 a piece. ShowPo managed to do promotions by creating in-house promotion materials such as lookbook pictures, social media graphic posts, videos, and content articles. By doing this, ShowPo has saved a fortune without decreasing potential of sales. ShowPo spends averagely 10% on marketing budget. After a few trial and errors to market their products through Facebook ads and traditional magazine advertising, Jane realised that wasn’t gonna work for the business. Hence she focused the marketing
solely on online social media platform and followers engagement through social media while becoming leading e-commerce retailer slash content creator. Social media engagement is key to ShowPo’s success. ShowPo has over 1 million Facebook followers while giant brick and mortar retailers David Jones & Myer has about 500,000. Compared to the two, the engagement rates are different. While David Jones & Myer saw around 4000 to 7000 Facebook followers engage averagely in a week, ShowPo was stampeded by more than 90,000. ShowPo’s up-market rival, The Iconic, saw 1700 of its 415,000 Facebook followers engage in the same period. ShowPo once had one point where the engagement rates was 130% of their followers.
Brand Development Strategies That can be achieved through creating content that speaks to their audience. ShowPo uses this to their advantage with their occasional throwbacks to the 90’s to create engaging & fun c o n t e n t t owa r d s t h e i r p r i m e millennials target audience. Their social media profiles tend to be incredibly hilarious and way too relatable to their followers. This r e s u l t s S h o w Po ’s b r a n d characteristic that speaks to their audience as their friends, someone that they can trust and be loyal with. Their Facebook account takes a different approach. The way in which they promote their clothing is not ‘salesy’ and they make the most of the latest trends and popular topics. It’s quirky. It’s different. They’re also occasionally weave in a post promoting one of
their items. Along with pictures that they posted, they’re also writing catchy captions with fun emojis. Their Facebook is a feed of witty and relatable memes and quotes that humanise the brand and further enhance its authenticity. ShowPo’s social media is a solid extension of a quirky, fun and on-trend brand. Their Instagram maintains visual consistency through gorgeous imagery with a minimalist colour palette with each theme evokes an emotion that resonates with their followers. Their bold choice of a visually minimalistic brand is one not many can pull off, but ShowPo have taken ownership and created a brand that is recognisable beyond its visual appearance. Through their social media presence, they have created a lifestyle and community that every woman feels a part of.
Marketing Mix : Product ShowPo has a wide range of products available. From clothing, shoes, bags, jewelleries, to homeware and beauty products are available to buy on their website and ready to ship worldwide. ShowPo provides the latest trend in just a click away such as wide varieties of dresses for party, casual, occasion and work to blouses, skirts, pants, and outerwears for various events such as partywear, racewear, denim, activewear, workwear to intimates.
Marketing Mix : Promotion Having massive active followers on social media as an asset for the brand, ShowPo’s consistently do their marketing and promotion through social media. The idea of marketing new arrivals can be translated to many ways in order to first catch customer’s attention. I n s i d e t h e i r we b s i t e, ShowPo also has a blog with articles about fashion, beauty, relationship, career, life, and celebrity gossip updates. These are articles that are intriguing their customer to just visit the website and read the blog – regardless of their intention to buy the products. ShowPo’s founder Jane Lu is actively promoting the products along with their company culture and stories
behind ShowPo’s. This can be seen through their Instagram stories and posts, Snapchat u p d a t e s , Yo u t u b e v i d e o s regularly – every post obviously full with pretty girls wearing ShowPo’s products. By doing this, ShowPo is creating brand image that’s in line with their target market, making the brand to have emotional engagement with their followers and turn it those to customers. By creating a community in their social media and posting s e l fi e s w e a r i n g t h e l a t e s t ShowPo’s products, at whatever party they’re attending, on any given night of the week. Hundreds of customers do the same on the popular social media photo site Instagram, tagging ShowPo to extend its social media reach. This proven effective in creating a cycle for customer to keep coming back to the brand without traditionally doing direct marketing to the customer.
Marketing Mix : Price ShowPo’s price range is quite medium priced as they’re targeting for young women’s market. Their price are mostly range as low as $2.95 up to $159.95. ShowPo’s teamed up with UNiDAYS to give 10% off for student discounts all year long. Also ShowPo’s occasionally have discount during special event such as winter sale, summer sale, boxing day, black Friday, singles day, Chinese new year, and race season – sometimes offered with special discount code to attract new customers.
Tops $24.95 - $69.95 Dress / Jumpsuit $44.95 - $109.95 Bottoms $29.95- $79.95 Outerwear $54.95 - $119.95 Shoes $39.95 - $159.95 Bags $29.95 - $64.95 Jewelleries $14.95 - $34.95 Beauty $2.95 - $104.95 Homewares $5.95 - $109.95
Marketing Mix : Distribution
quality of the products also providing the products based on what their customer loves.
M o s t o f S h o w Po ’s products are made in China which are imported to Australia monthly. Some of the beauty products are bought directly from the brand as their official resellers such as Jeffree Star, Lime Crime, and Milani as they don’t have brick and mortar stockiest in Australia. Having the buying team curate the products according to the latest trend and bought it in massive quantity, ShowPo is able maintain the price without reducing the
ShowPo’s products are distributed through their main e-commerce channel as their retail platform. Customer can shop and pay with secure shopping at their website. Packages then delivered by Australia Post to all across Australia and worldwide to their customer. ShowPo also regularly hold annual charity sample sale. This year on October 31st, more than 2,000 garments were sold on the day with all sale proceeds going toward The Hunger Project Australia.
Conclusion ShowPo started together with the rising of social media in Australia. Millennials play a big role as a part of their massive success. Their customer based interactions keeping the brand close to the customer, making ShowPo easier to introduce new products (and lifestyle) to its customer. Their marketing strategies may work during the rise of the social media and may change depending on the marketing trend. ShowPo needs to keep on updating the marketing trend and innovate in order to not being left by their millennials customer.
References ShowPo Media Kit 2015, ShowPo, accessed 11 November 2017, <https://showpomediakit.wordpress.com/> INSIDE SHOWPO'S MARKETING MACHINE: How Jane Lu Built a Powerhouse Digital Brand 2017, Business Insider, accessed 11 November 2017, <https://www.businessinsider.com.au/showpo-jane-lu-marketing-2017-5/> At 27, Jane Lu demonstrates how itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s done at ShowPo 2014, Smart Company, accessed 11 November 2017, <https://www.smartcompany.com.au/ entrepreneurs/influencers-profiles/at-27-jane-lu-shows-how-it-s-done-at-showpo/> My Big Idea: Jane Lu of Showpo 2017, Elle Australia, accessed 11 November 2017 < https://www.elle.com.au/culture/showpo-founder-jane-lureveals-the-secrets-to-her-success-13191/> How Jane Lu Built ShowPo Online Fashion House on Social Media 2014, Financial Review, accessed 11 November 2017, < http://www.afr.com/ leadership/entrepreneur/how-jane-lu-built-showpo-online-fashion-house-on-social-media-20140331-jybtk/>