you will connect with more people who are customers and giving good feedback , interviews and PR seems to be more localised as well .
Social Media really is the best way to connect with international customers .
Q9 . You started out as Show Pony , why the change to Showpo ?
You don ’ t want to have a name where you have to explain it or how to spell it . Show Pony was so cute and at the time our brand was mainly party dresses and so Show Pony suited . Then as we started selling more and more internationally mainly through Instagram we realised that there were Show Pony ’ s around the world , including the US which is our second biggest market . Knowing how litigious the US is we couldn ’ t just invest everything back into a brand that we would have to continue defending . We ’ d rather spend the money on a rebrand and marketing rather than legal .
When I came to this realisation , my heart sank ; it was one of the worst moments . When I look back now , I was being so melodramatic especially because we have overcome that obstacle but at the time it was so bad . We took 3 months to brainstorm , we didn ’ t really understand SEO but we thought if we just dropped a few letters off it would be good for brand recognition .
It was actually a blessing in disguise because now that we have expanded our product offering , one of the first things we started doing in product development was work wear so Showpo worked . Changing our name to a word that we made up not only allowed us to have a unique domain name and social media handle but it doesn ’ t define who we are , we define who we are .
Q10 . People may not know that you started with bricks-and-mortar retail stores , how and why did you make the transition to online ? What worked ? What didn ’ t ?
Showpo started online and then 3 months later went to bricks-andmortar .
The first store was ok , it was making a little bit above breaking even , but the second store was a cash cow and so that ’ s what made it tempting to want to do more stores . Then we realised how much effort it
10 Women ’ s Network Magazine