Show Po, What does Showpo do?

Show Po – Showpo is an Australian online fashion retailer. Aimed primarily at young women, the company’s vision is to “be your go-to place to shop.” As of June 2017, Showpo’s yearly revenue was $30 million, with 35% of sales occurring internationally.

Showpo CEO Jane Lu has described the company’s brand on social media as its “biggest competitive advantage.” As of May 2017, the company had 1.1 million groups on Instagram and 895,100 likes on Facebook.

Showpo logo

Showpo started ten years ago in creator Jane Lu’s parents’ garage. Since then, the e-commerce stock has grown into a fashion empire. Headquartered in Sydney, the company now ships to more than 100 countries and has more than four million followers on its social media channels. With a mission to bring the latest fashion to women worldwide, the Showpo team works tirelessly to inspire their community and offer a seamless spending experience.

The company has experienced many stages of rapid growth since its humble beginnings. During a recent change, Jane Lu, founder and CEO, and Mitul Lakhani, director of digital products, decided to use the time to improve internal processes. Teams worked in silos, limiting transparency across the company and making it challenging to align around critical objectives. Significant campaigns were managed in spreadsheets that remained not continuously updated, leading to confusion and lack of accountability. It led to long status update meetings, which took time away from what the company is known for in fashion.

History

In 2010, Showpo was launched as “Show Pony” by co-founder Jane Lu, initially working from her parent’s garage in Balmain, Sydney. Three months after launching, the company opened a physical store on Broadway in Sydney, followed by a kiosk on Pitt St Westfield in August 2011. In 2012, Showpo had its primary million-dollar month with just four employees. Showpo closed its profitable brick-and-mortar stores in 2013 to focus its business solely online. In 2014, the company had a turnover of $10 million in sales; by 2017, it had reached a run rate of $30 million.

Choose A Work Management Solution.

Mitul knew that a work management solution would help improve processes at Showpo. Asana was the best choice because Mitul had used it in a preceding role, and Showpo’s original team was already on the platform. To ensure the venue was right for the entire business, the Asana Sydney team visited Showpo to speak to key stakeholders about their challenges.

• In these meetings, it became clear that Asana was the right solution because:
• Flexible workflows allowed one tool to remain used throughout the company.
• Easy task assignments and real-time status updates reduced the need for excessive meetings and emails.
• A solo source of truth would bring into line the business about the same goals.

Starting a New Chapter

To ensure buy-in, Jane and Mitul presented Asana to the company and clearly outlined how it would improve daily work. For example, Asana would improve clarity around schedules and work progress, reducing the need for excessive meetings to update status. The platform was introduced to one team at a time to avoid overwhelming, starting with the original team. In addition to this, an Asana customer success director conducted live training sessions to help each group feel confident using the platform to manage their projects and individual work.

Overall, Jane led the charge by using Asana to manage her work, such as planning business strategies and engaging in public relations activities, creating a positive ripple result among managers and teams.

Harnessing the Benefits of Automation

1. Showpo currently uses Asana across the company. All business processes run on the platform, from digital production to fashion launches. Below are some critical use cases:
2. Business planning takes place in Asana. Showpo’s senior decision-making team uses Asana to create weekly planning and priority meeting agendas. It ensures that important information does not go unnoticed and that each meeting has a clear structure.
3. Campaigns like seasonal launches (think: Coachella collection) now run entirely in Asana. Templates that automatically populate tasks and dates remain used to structure campaigns that lead to a 30% increase in efficiency.
4. Digital product management processes like roadmap creation and product feature planning remain on the platform. The Asana product roadmap template plans agendas and shows high-level stakeholders what’s in the works. Project templates remain then used to launch individual product features with custom rules and fields to categorize tasks and share necessary information. A streamlined process quickly has made communication easier and increased overall productivity.
5. Employee onboarding remains done in Asana, and each new hire project remains started using a template so no steps or critical information remains forgotten. This streamlined process saves the team a lot of time and has improved the experience for new employees, who know what to expect from day one.

Conclusion

The Showpo team will continue to focus on offering fashion-focused clothing to women worldwide. It means continuing to connect with clientele on social channels and revolutionizing the user experience through digital platform updates. Most importantly, it means putting the customer first and working with each team to deliver an end-to-end experience that is impactful and memorable. Asana will help the team manage all aspects of this process, now and in the future.