Embracing change - Becoming a global, multi-million dollar brand.
aussieBum is an iconic Australian men's swimwear, underwear and lifestyle clothing brand. From humble beginnings in 2001, the company now manufactures over 1 million underwear and swimwear garments per year, along with fresh lifestyle apparel lines. Sold globally, each and every aussieBum garment is still designed by Sean Ashby in Sydney, Australia.
Sean, the owner of aussieBum, founded the ‘company of one’ in 2001 during the dot-com boom period. In many respects, aussieBum was ahead of the curve with e-commerce during that time (self pioneers), trying new ideas, failing and trying again. “I am truly passionate about the brand and want to make sure everything comes together at the right junctions,” says Sean. Over several years aussieBum has grown into the hugely successful multinational brand it is today, with a primary sales channel of B2C.
With increased popularity comes increased complexity
As a large online retailer with rising popularity and growth, aussieBum is no stranger to the persistent challenges of rapidly changing technology and fluctuating technical infrastructure requirements. In addition, being an Australian-based business trading worldwide with global production, distribution and supply chain processes, there is a significant increase in the complexity of managing technical operations.
Key challenges the company faced include:
Efficiently maintaining and managing high traffic across the e-commerce platform
Averting downtime and disruption to customers and internal operations
Data security, threat identification and prevention
Managing high volumes of website traffic to provide the best experience
Changing dynamics during the pandemic
Managing a remote global workforce securely and efficiently
Scaling requirements based on unpredictable volume fluctuations in sales
Evolving technology and business growth
Technical knowledge and workforce capabilities needed to run new technologies and systems
Scalability of the technical team to manage costs vs business growth
Partnered Approach for Scalable Solutions and AWS Expertise
The team at aussieBum partnered with Thoughtworks for a myriad of ongoing transformation and operational support through Managed Services, in addition to implementing solutions for specific larger, more complex projects.
Sean explains, “We are a multimillion-dollar successful company - but do you think we could manage the very basic things? No! You guys can do it with your eyes closed. There have been a number of challenging times where we’ve had to bring ourselves up to speed, and it’s important that the companies you partner with speak the same language. Thoughtworks have shown great value in the depth in solutions they provide and the ability to get in and get the job done. When it comes to communication, Thoughtworks is always responsive, and everyone we’ve dealt with have been very savvy business people.“
As part of the Managed Services arrangement, Thoughtworks oversees and maintains several managed workloads for aussieBum, including:
e-commerce website (production environment); Including high-volume site with traffic up to 1000 sessions/minute during peak periods
Wholesale e-commerce website (production environment)
A support instance
An order queueing instance
A processing system
An internal workload for staff used for stock maintenance and order processing
Marketplace
Outcomes
"When you partner with someone like Thoughtworks, the conversations are remarkable and lead to revelations on moving the company forward," said Sean.
By partnering with Thoughtworks and leveraging Managed Services, aussieBum transformed its technical operations, resulting in multiple successful outcomes:
Efficient ongoing management and maintenance of e-commerce website and operations
Peace of mind knowing website operations are reliability managed with the highest level of commitment around security and uptime
Confidence in having the most rigorous security certificates enabled and customer data regularly monitored and secure
Around the clock support to cover global peak sales times (24/7/365 coverage)
Scalable technical cloud solutions to provide dynamic response to website traffic requirements - improving accessibility, AWS service cost management and customer experience
Managing the change in dynamics during the pandemic
Guidance implementing solutions to enable secure, ‘plug and play’ setups and changes to access requirements to empower a productive remote workforce
Access to Thoughtworks' team with the technical skills to manage the implementation of solutions that give aussieBum the ability to scale back and then up again when demand changes
Evolving technology and business growth
Modernization and continuous improvement to grow and scale the business
Cost saving - review of AWS services to reduce unnecessary costs
Thoughtworks' team of cloud experts increased the knowledge base and technical capabilities of the aussieBum team instantly, without the need to hire
Access to expert cloud operations knowledge 24/7 resulted in managing robust systems that can scale when required across AU and US instances, with applications interacting and running securely at peak performance
Sean says, “Someone on our own IT team may not have the depth of knowledge to be able to solve all of the problems, or provide the 24/7 coverage. Having someone, like Thoughtworks, who understands the situation and is capable of being a problem solver rather than just a ‘mediator’, that’s a game changer. It is really valuable to us and our business having that coverage and support.”
Partnering with Thoughtworks for Managed Services has been a vital element in scaling, containerisation, optimisation, best practice, and positively reducing the cost of AWS services. Entrusting Thoughtworks' qualified AWS Architects proficient in deep AWS knowledge to take care of IT and cloud operations made it possible for aussieBum to focus on what they do best - offering great swimwear and service to their global customer base.
The solid working relationship between aussieBum and Thoughtworks continues to strengthen and is a testament to the kind of customer service Thoughtworks prides itself on.
The biggest standout for me has been the way Thoughtworks develops relationships in a way that is transparent and in tune with the real world, in real time and aware of what's going on around. I can see that Thoughtworks is not about cutting costs or revenue, it's about the human factor for you and this allows you to connect very well.
