What insta-famous entreprenuer Iyia Liu learnt from her Celebration Box debacle

Friday, 9 November 2018

Lyia Liu is building a $3 million house in Dairy Flat on Auckland's North Shore after selling her Waist Trainer business.

Insta-famous entrepreneur Iyia Liu says the backlash around her recent business Celebration Box was a stressful and frustrating period.

Liu's dessert box company left a sour taste for some customers and complaints about late deliveries, or boxes arriving that weren't as advertised, escalated on social media.

But the dust had since settled and Liu said facing the backlash and hate was stressful.

It all started with a deleted comment.

The Celebration Box which arrived was not what we were promised.

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Liu admits she deleted comments that were negative about her company, but maintains they were not constructive, but hateful.

'It's fine, everyone's entitled to their opinion but the original comment was deleted because I felt like the customer didn't really give us a chance to fix the problem,' Liu said.

The issue occurred on a Friday, after working hours, and by Monday a social media had brewed a storm that caught everyone's attention.

'After that Facebook post went viral we got absolutely spammed. It was blasting everywhere and we felt the pressure.'

Celebration Box is the 26 year old's fifth business.

'It was a stressful period of time, the business itself was really stressful and the media on top was overwhelming. I really didn't know what to do.'

'It's a bit frustrating, because it's all speculation. Celebration Box did rectify our bad orders by refunding, but people turned it into this big thing and dragging everything it. I feel like it just sucks for me.'

When the Celebration Box debacle broke out Liu was in Bali on a pre-planned trip. And customers were not happy the online entrepreneur was posting beach photos rather than fixing their orders.

Liu also had stoush with competitor Sweet Box after people on social media alleged Liu had copied their idea.

'I don't have anything against anyone there's plenty to go around.'

There were numerous Reddit threads, thousands of social media comments and a fake Celebration Box Facebook page publicising any missteps made by the company.

But Liu said she did not let that affect her, as it was just part and parcel of being an e-commerce business that could be scrutinised, or supported, by customers online.

Celebration Box is the 26-year-old's fifth business.

Her claim to fame was the Waist Trainer, worn by Kylie Jenner, whom she paid $300,000 for publicising her product.

Kiwi e-commerce entrepreneur famous for making millions of the back of her Waist Trainer worn by the Kardashians has copped flack for sub-standard customer service in her new venture.Founder of Waist Trainer, Luxe Fitness and Bambi Boutique, Iyia Liu started her an online gift box website Celebration Box just under two months ago but has received hundreds of complaints on social media from disgruntled customers.

Liu said influencers were a big part of her marketing strategy, and she continued to pay various beauty bloggers and Instagram models to post pictures of themselves with her products.

'I use the same model for all my businesses, it's really effective marketing.'

Liu said she scraped up the $300,000 to pay Jenner after just a year of selling Waist Trainer.

'I started small paying smaller influencers and just worked my way up.'

Liu sold Waist Trainer, and says she made enough for the $3 million house she's building in Coatsville outside of Auckland city.

'Business is not the only goal. One of my life dream was to own a house, I didn't realise how long it would take.'

Liu also owned Luxe Fitness, a protein powder company which she also sold.

She is managing Celebration Box and Bambi, and has gone into the conference business now too, with Karen Walker among the impressive women fronting for her Girls in Business networking day, set to be held on Saturday at The Cloud.

Liu said she had come across speed bumps with all her businesses, but none were as big as what she faced with for Celebration Box.

'One of the main issues before was the lack of space. A lot of people were working on top of each other and it wasn't organised.

'Now we've got space we've got a really good process and that's improved a lot of things.'

Her biggest learning from the experience was resilience.

'If you have a dream to do this then just try it… Don't let negativity make you lose confidence, still try and go ahead.'

This story has been updated to correct that Liu is building a house in Coatesville not Dairy Flat.