Bumming Around

One Australian business that’s taken innovative steps to develop their exports is aussieBum. It’s the cheeky Australian brand taking on the global market for men’s fashion, from the bottom up. Founder, Sean Ashby, is so confident of ongoing success he believes it’ll be the next Quicksilver or Victoria’s Secret on the scale of world brands.

Taking me through the business, Ashby’s enthusiasm is contagious each time he shows me a “really cool thing”, a phrase he uses a lot! All these things really are cool, thanks to his innovative marketing and business strategy.

But its humble beginnings weren’t so cool for aussieBum. Ashby designed his first range of men’s swimwear in 2001 and invested his $20,000 life savings into launching the business. He was met with instant rejection. Australia’s major department stores didn’t want to know him, claiming the brand would never take off. Little did they know aussieBum would grow to be a multi-million dollar company in just five years, would continue to grow by 20 percent every quarter, and be so stable that if their sales dropped by half tomorrow the business would still be profitable. It’s pretty comforting for Ashby and co-owner Guyon Holland, who joined aussieBum in 2003 to implement the business systems that would complement Ashby’s creative and strategic endeavours.

And most of that comfort factor is thanks to the business’s exports. Currently, around 90 percent of aussieBum’s business is in international sales and they now sell into 75 countries.

Not bad considering the local major retailers didn’t want anything to do with him in the early days. Given their resolute dismissal of his product, it would have been easy for Ashby to throw up his hands and walk away, but he’s not one to shy away from a challenge. “So it was really a case of, ‘I’m going to prove you wrong’. I had a big chip on my shoulder, and that real spirit of, let’s just look at this again and find a solution. So rather than have the retailer as the hurdle to get to the consumer, I decided to find a way to get to the consumer directly.”

Ashby had little choice but to take his business online, instantly opening it up to international markets, taking the first overseas internet order from the UK not long after it launched online. “It was one order one day, then two orders the next day, and it just grew. Now we’re talking thousands of orders a day.”

But it wasn’t as simple as that. The attraction to aussieBum’s range (which now also includes underwear, leisurewear, sportswear, and loungewear) lies in its high quality and Australian-owned and manufactured status. Ashby pushes the brand by selling not only the products but also the Australian way of life. And by manufacturing locally, it helps eliminate any import restrictions incurred by some countries if the products were manufactured in China.