Thanks to a new round of financing, forward thinking men’s brand Bonobos is poised for mega growth in 2011.
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Job Title: Co-founder and CEO of Bonobos
Launched in 2007 by two former Stanford Business School roommates Brian Spaly and Andy Dunn, Bonobos is an online retailer that has quickly built up its reputation for selling kick-ass fitting pants–by men for men. In less than three years, it has sold more than 55,000 pairs of pants and eliminated “khaki diaper butt.” With free shipping & returns and great customer service provided by Bonobos “ninjas,” guys no longer need to leave the couch to up their fashion quotient. In this edition of 20 Questions, Dunn tells us why men hate to shop, the biggest challenges in running an online business, and the importance of hiring a good team.
Jennifer Sung: How did you get started with Bonobos?
Andy Dunn: [My business partner and I] couldn’t find pants that fit so we came up with a design of pants that fits better for a guy’s anatomy. Our pants are made with a contoured waistband and they are medium rise–so they’re not too tight or too droopy. And they have a tailored cut in the thigh that eliminates that frumpy mass-market fit but is a little more comfortable than your typical super tight Euro fit. What we saw was that people who were trying these pants on were telling us, ‘This is the best pair of pants I’ve ever put on.’ We tried to figure out how to bring these pants to a wider audience and we decided to put them up on a website. When we did that, a whole group of people were telling us, ‘You can’t do that. You have to launch a brand through traditional channels, you have to launch through stores, you have to do wholesale, you have to sell through your own stores.’ But we figured we’ll put them up on the web, we will get started that way and see how it goes. And we ended up growing like crazy just through our website. What we discovered is that guys can’t find pants that fit and they don’t want to go into stores to look for them. So we married those two things together and that’s really how Bonobos was born.
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