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Last month I traveled to Tokyo to personally shot a series of underwear campaigns with a few Japanese models. I wanted to work around Gay Games vibe since I will be a participant at the Games later this year, so this is very close to the bone. I decided to write a concept for bootcamp drills. As a fencer we have intense warm up sessions that require a lot of stretches and core strength building work to avoid injury when we start fencing - skipping, wall sit, stretches, lunges, short lunges, medium and more long lunges.. Also squats, half squats, full squats and recover, a lot of explosive actions. I have done it all in the last 12 months and 4 times a week. The warmup coach is intense and I wanted to look into the photoshoot but with more sugar and spice added to the underwear shoot since well we are pulling the strings.
I wanted a bold and daring shoot on location. It was great that the guys were super friendly and they just went with my idea, there were no jitters, protests or divas on set which I often get with the models back home. Sho and Sasuke were totally professional and I think deep down they also wanted to shoot something risque in public.
It is not often we see bootcamp drills in Australia with Asian men involved, usually the Asian is getting drilled or on the receiving end of a hardcore session lead by a white guy. In Asia, two Asian men doing boot camp drills is very common and I wanted to bring the vision to the Australian community that Asian men can also be strong, sexy and brilliant with fitness. To be honest I have never come across any ad so far and businesses in Australia don't want to risk sales making controversial decisions. At StanleyBurton.com we are not afraid of pushing the boundaries. We create great visuals that can generate powerful conversations.
Sexy Behind the Scene video from the Tokyo bootcamp photo shoot
Please view the Behind the Scene video of this sexy photo shoot from Tokyo. Click on the image below opens up our Stanley Burton Youtube Channel which we just launched simutaneously.
Video by _Bam_Guys (Tokyo based)
The idea also came about with a conversation I heard on a Gay Games vodcast about Transgender in sport that traditionally white men are seen as the more active and stronger. In Australian fitness fashion, white men are predominantly used in marketing because they are seen as sexier, whiter, stronger and ideal. No one would buy underwear when the business portrays two Asians working out. We are shifting the landscape of underwear advertising in Australia, you won’t find another underwear retailer in Australia with consistent marketing of Asians in underwear than at StanleyBurton.com
If you have followed our original photo shoot since the beginning in 2021, you would have seen a few shoots where we commissioned photographer @_BAM_Guys in Tokyo to photograph our first Asian Empowerment campaign for Stanley Burton Australia. This campaign first launched at DNA Magazine, our media partner - for global reach. Stanley Burton is a small business with big impact for so many reasons
When customers praise us for our efforts we feel valued and validated that we are on the right path. Nothing needs to change, unlike other underwear retailers in the LGBTQI community in Australia that need to whip up all new campaigns and make a huge production on how to be diverse. At Stanley Burton, we are already diverse, we are already talking about inclusion and we are also the one making changes, contributing to charity that want to make a difference. There is no time to wait but we have been riding the Diversity wave for a very long time.
Why do we need to announce this in bold?
For us, this is not just implementing another shipping location to gain more sales, we also value visibility as the only underwear online retailer in Australia fully owned and operated by Asians. We see many opportunities using our platform to raise awareness and continue our work with waking up retailers across international borders to start employing Asians and other marginalised groups.
Various factors contributes to the locations we ship when we launched StanleyBurton.com two years ago, not just pressing a button in the backend. First and foremost we tirelessly worked towards addressing the locals market because we already know the cultural demographic first hand. However due to our popular followings in the USA and thanks to our American brand champs we have also gained a number of regular American customers from New York to LA.
Launching to the Asian market allows us to engage with Asian customers closely. We aim to bring the world together across the underwear community when the underwear brands maximise our shared assets for our mutual growth with diversity and inclusion - and that's just pure logic and great business relationships.
Stay tuned to more photo shoots from Tokyo. Don't forget to follow us on Instagram. Share and comments are greatly appreciated.
We now ship to Asia (Hong Kong SAR, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan)
Standard International 6 to 27 Business Days AUD 21
Express Shipping 6 to 12 Business Days AUD 36
Free Standard Shipping for Orders over AUD 130
