Designing an Icon: aussieBum's Journey with GJS

Overview

aussieBum is without a doubt one of Australia’s most iconic brands. It is internationally renowned, daringly different and unquestionably sexy. However the origins of this icon are much more humble, and success for CEO Sean Ashby hasn’t come without perseverance, persuasion and unwavering self-belief. As its marketing slogan says, “if you doubt yourself, wear something else.”

In the early days of the brand, breaking into the retail market seemed an impossibility. Sean shopped his designs around to almost all the major Australian retailers, but none would take the range. His innovative alternative was to create an online marketplace that would take the brand to a global audience and a content-driven marketing strategy that gave the brand a tangible presence, in an otherwise intangible world.

Challenge

Like many people in the print industry Sean’s foray into digital printing was a process of self-education. He started out with a small desktop printer and quickly taught himself the ins and outs of printing, colour management and garment shrinkage.

As volume and demand for his bespoke underwear and swimwear designs grew it quickly became apparent that he could no longer keep up with demand.

Sean purchased three dye sublimation printers and from these he quickly learnt about humidity, heaters and drying. From here his fleet of printers expanded to eight but this equipment aged and colour matching became inconsistent and unreliable between the various machines he was running so he soon realised that aussieBum needed a better solution so it could continue its rapid growth and expansion.

In addition to needing an agile solution that could allow aussieBum to produce custom, short-run garments, it also needed to be able to withstand the rigors of full-scale production and manufacturing.

The solution also needed to continue to produce garments that were durable enough to be worn everyday, withstand the rigors of regular washing and still remain a comfortable and fashionable choice for discerning consumers.

Solution

With a business ethos based on quality, assurance and the absence of doubt, Sean turned to GJS based on industry referrals and recommendations. GJS helped Sean and aussieBum by installing two Roland XF-640 printers using Sawgrass SubliM ink and Beaver Paper.

GJS worked closely with aussieBum to correct the legacy colour matching issues on various product ranges to ensure that future production was not just identical, but improved. With the new printers correctly colour matched this meant that Sean could more accurately and effectively design garments with the resulting physical products more closely matching his on-screen creations.

“We touch each garment about six to eight times in house, from design to production, we are quality checking each garment at almost every step of the process. This means that we spot inaccuracies and flaws very quickly so the output from the GJS products needed to be reliable and consistent.”

aussieBum now has three dedicated print managers that operate and manage its printing room. On any given day when it is in high-production mode the printers can be expected to be printing and producing quality garments all day.

“With the help of GJS, we are able to produce a cost effective garment, in Australia, and market it to the world successfully.”

Give the people what they want!

With an online social community reach that numbers in the millions aussieBum exemplifies the modern post-dot-com era e-commerce success story. The brand loyalty and immediacy of the feedback that can be garnered from its social following, coupled with the flexibility of its dye sublimation solutions, means that Aussiebum can make small changes to products on the fly, without the commitment to expensive, large product runs.

As the world becomes a global marketplace, aussieBum is perfectly placed to capitalise on the opportunities that this new global economic model brings – and it is doing this with the help of products from GJS.