Smarty pants

Sean Ashby took his wares overseas, which is why AussieBum swimmers and smalls now cover men's bottoms all over the world

Shunned by local retailers, AussieBum founder Sean Ashby took his wares overseas, which is why his loud, cheeky swimmers and smalls now cover men's bottoms all over the world

Driving down a suburban street in Sydney’s inner west, it’s difficult to imagine that one of Australia’s most successful export businesses lurks in the vicinity. Lived-in terraces line both sides and dog-walkers amble past a Mediterranean mamma on her veranda. There’s no hint of a global company – until you see the high-calibre cars (an Alfa Romeo, a top-of-the-line Range Rover and a Mercedes) luxuriating in the sun.

Nearby, hidden behind a sophisticated yet discreet slate building is the home of anything but discretion. This is the headquarters of AussieBum, the loud, cheeky and cleverly designed men’s swimwear and underwear label that has catchy styles such as Lightning, Boosterjock and Flaunt. Forget Calvin Klein’s plain whites or Speedo’s black and navy, these smalls come in prints and even glow-in-the-dark styles that brand brave male bottoms throughout the world as cool and hip.

“The company started literally around the corner in my lounge room,” says Sean Ashby (pictured opposite), the super-fit 42-year-old founder and creative force behind AussieBum. “Then it moved into the bedroom, then the kitchen, until finally we moved in next door about four years ago. We filled up that area and then we moved in here 16 months ago.”

“Here” is a cleverly designed warehouse that blends pleasure with serious business. Downstairs is the photographic studio, where Ashby personally shoots all his products, and there’s a room-sized printer that rolls out his designs in life-size scale. His star products – thousands of them – lie in baskets ready to be handled by multi-lingual “pickers and packers” (backpackers who double as translators). “We can shed 2000 orders, each with an average of three or four different items, within six hours,” he says.

Upstairs is an airy, open-plan space, which looks more home than office. It comprises a fully equipped kitchen, a lounge area with Foxtel, an in-office gym, a chill-out room and a barbecue on the balcony – designed, no doubt, for the 18-hour days that often come with running an international business. In one corner is Ashby’s cocoon-like office. 

“It’s my dogged determination not to get any bigger so we don’t have to move,” says the jeans-and-T-shirt-clad Ashby, who, although a little delicate after a too-rich meal the previous night, still manages to rustle up the enthusiasm of a man half his age. “It really started as a ‘business as leisure’. It didn’t start with the idea of ‘we’re going to make a million here’.”

But millions – and a cult worldwide brand – he has made. This year the internet-based company is on target to turn over more than $20 million. Iconic label Bonds has courted the company and AussieBum now has major real estate in some of the world’s leading fashion stores: Selfridges and Harvey Nichols in London, Printemps and Galeries Lafayette in Paris and KaDeWe in Berlin, among them. It trades in 12 languages and, thanks to aggressive marketing that sees difficult-to-miss blokes wearing togs no larger than your average envelope on buses, taxis and billboards worldwide, Australian cossies are no longer synonymous with Speedos. “I dare say it’s probably one of the most successful Australian brands of all time,” says Sydney-based designer Alex Perry. And all because of a great idea, spurred on by rejection.

Almost nine years ago, Ashby went to buy his annual pair of quick-drying Speedos at Sydney department store Gowings. “Like many guys, I’d grown up with the nylon Speedos,” he says. “It was an Australian tradition.” But when the salesperson told Ashby Speedo no longer made his favourite nylon design, he was forced to buy the rather uncomfortable (and clingy) new one that didn’t feel the same. “I was sitting on the beach in Lycra going ‘this is not a pretty look’,” he recalls. “I was with a mate and said: ‘How hard could it be to make swimwear?’”

Ashby had just left a marketing job at Warner Music and, although he was working as a personal trainer “to affluent, successful people”, his preferred position was sitting on the hot sand of north Bondi Beach. “The idea was that I’d get the swimwear made, sell it to mates and at the markets, then in the afternoon I could go to the beach,” says Ashby, whose company is named more for his “beach bum” status than the rears his cossies cover. “The problem was that my mates kept telling other mates,” he laughs.

Dipping into $20,000 he’d saved for a home loan, he had samples and a brochure made and started doorknocking. “I drove down to Torquay on the Great Ocean Road in Victoria,” says Melbourne-born Ashby, cringing. “That was the biggest mistake in my life – it’s boardshorts territory. I’ve never been so ridiculed. If I hadn’t paid for the hire car, I would have driven back.”

Worse was to come when he tried the retail heavyweights. Myer refused to see him and David Jones said he was wasting his time. Undeterred, Ashby grabbed his model-fit beach buddies, photographed them in his quick-drying sluggos doing a “Baywatch sort of thing” and sent the shots with a pair of AussieBums to newspapers and magazines overseas. Ashby taught himself to set up a website and a global company was born. “After I got rejected in Australia, the only option I had was international,” says Ashby, whose togs have even graced the bottoms of Kylie Minogue’s on-screen dancers.

A decade on, the rejection still stings. Nerida Howard, who has known Ashby for most of her life, says failure is a great motivator for her friend. “If anyone says Sean can’t, he’ll prove he can –twofold. He won’t be beaten.” And she adds, “If you piss him off, you’re gone.”

Today Ashby has no desire for his product to sit in our leading menswear departments. “Going to them now and saying, ‘You can stock my product, I’m going to make money and you’re going to make money’ – do I want that? No. If it was all about the money, why not? But you’ve got to stand up for what you believe in and they did the wrong thing.”

AussieBum’s Australian sales, which are solely internet, account for 15 per cent of business, so it appears Ashby and co-owner Guyon Holland have been doing the right thing. Their freedom to take risks has paid off. Ashby launched the internet business at the height of the dot-com bust. He refused to pay for space in overseas department stores – “We were like, ‘Why would we pay for you to sell our product?’ ” He designs each new line, creates all the brand imagery and advertising, and photographs the new products (plus the oh-so-sexy images for the website). Ashby even buys the media space – “very last-minute so we buy distress,” he says. 

The company has also rejected the accepted ragtrade temptation to manufacture in China. “We had the choice to make it in China, but it’s a long way away if I f--k up,” explains Ashby, who is loath to call himself a designer. “We also source the best fabrics from around the world, including local mills. Our produce may cost five times more yet, internationally, people really appreciate the fact it’s made here.”

Ashby believes the grassroots nature of his business has driven its success. “People say, ‘Oh you’re such an entrepreneur’ but I think the better word is ‘naive’.” In 2005 he took out the Premier’s NSW Export Award but admits, “If I had known all the rules and what I was supposed to do, we’d never be where we are.”

His mate, Alex Perry, sees things differently: “He pretends it’s all a bit of fluke, but I’m on to him.” The designer says Ashby has “nailed the market” in both underwear and swimwear (including the AussieBum boardshorts that “make your arse look good”). “Swimwear is a really specific thing to do and he’s blitzed it.”

Ashby grew up a long way from the beach. He lived near the foothills of the Dandenong Ranges with his older sister (a beautician), mum (a checkout operator) and dad (a plumber), spent his teens at a local roller rink and ended up becoming Victoria’s figureskating champion. “I wouldn’t say I fitted into the norm,” he says, “so it was a tough time. Where you’ve got a child with unique ambitions...it didn’t roll too well.”

He left school early and studied design at Box Hill TAFE before enrolling in fine art at Canberra School of Art at 16. Realising he was “too young”, Ashby soon dropped out. His friend, Nerida Howard, joined him in Canberra, where they started a short-lived clothing label. “I could sew and he had the passion,” she says. They returned to Melbourne, where Ashby worked in advertising. After a stint in Perth, he settled in Sydney’s Leichhardt in 1991, aged 24, where he still lives “two roundabouts” from his office.

Ashby’s life now is significantly different. He often finds himself on stunning locations for photoshoots and always flies first class – “I don’t like posh food so they give me meat pies,” says the owner of that black Range Rover. He has also bought Prada shirts on Rodeo Drive without looking at the price. “I’m very spoilt,” he admits. Still, he says he tries not “to get ahead” of himself. “At the end of the day, I make swimwear. Yet some people I meet in similar trades, you’d think they’d invented a cure for cancer.”

Succumbing to “pressure from customers”, Ashby is soon to open a retail store in AussieBum’s spiritual home of Bondi. There are also stores planned for New York, London, Madrid and Shanghai. Like the label, they will be originals, fusing a small retail space with the brand’s internet base. Customers will be able to try on samples in store and have orders delivered the next day. And Bonds, Bendon and others beware – Ashby is working on a Women Can Wear line. “We have a large customer base of women who buy for partners but like to wear some of our (flat-fronted) Classic Underwear range,” he says.

These days, there’s little time to loll about at Bondi but Ashby still gets the “biggest buzz” seeing his cossies on real bums and plans to be at the helm of AussieBum for some time. “For people who have followed the story of our brand, I’m not about to add a chapter in ‘And we sold out for profit’. We’re still having fun.” And he adds with a smile, “What am I going to do? Go back and sit on a beach?”