Fashion Entrepreneur Report – Delivering the business of fashion from Nolcha: Fashion Busi: Interview

Men’s fashion is usually relegated to tops and bottoms. It is just that simple, so how do you take an age old concept and make it not only original, but wearable and profitable?

Brian Spaly and Andy Dunn, founders of Bonobos.com have done just that with a technological and ecological edge that has gotten the gentleman’s stamp of approval, without leaving anyone out. They make pants. Pants for sportsfans (try the Crimson Ruggers). Pants for the jetsetter (who wouldn’t wear the Leblons in Ibiza or St. Tropez). Pants for the overachiever (Pluperfects). Pants for the rebel (welcome the Orange Crush). Pants for the air-guitarist (dare I say Flip Fantasia…okay they’re shorts), and yes, even pants for the nine to fiver (the classic Snapdragons 1).

What is so genius about their product is not necessarily that they make some kick ass pants, but that they thought outside the box as far as business planning, and it is that entrepreneurial spirit which has put these Stanford MBA’s on the map as far as men’s fashion goes.

Designer Brian Spaly went from sewing a pair of pants on a borrowed sewing machine in graduate school to attending the Premier Vision in Paris.

“I started thinking about doing this in business school in 2003,” explains Spaly. I had fixed some of my own pants, re-did the seams so they looked better. I did some research and found out that most guys do not like the way their pants fit. After shopping them around my classes (guys were trying samples on in the parking lot of Stanford in between classes) I used my savings to start the business. First, I made several renditions of samples and then starting give them to friends who thought they were great and everyone wanted to by them. There is a sort of camaraderie in business school where everyone wants to support your endeavors so in the first 3 months I started with about 50 pairs, then 100. In 2007, Andy came in as CEO and added a much more robust e-commerce website. We did about 20,000 in sales the first couple of months. By March, I quit my job and came in full time. Now we are trying to build a big exciting company.”

But Bonobos.com is not just about selling a well-fitting trouser. In today’s “I want it right now” society, they use more of a friends and family “clan” approach to marketing and most initial buyers come from word of mouth.

“We can not stop someone from going into Barney’s and grabbing a garment that they might need the next day for an event or interview. What we can do though, is make it more fun for guys to talk about the clothes in a medium that is more conducive to what they are used to. These are guys who go on the internet and make transactions happen all day every day and the only time they go into a retail environment is with their wives or girlfriends. Our customers send e-mails out to friends to talk about how great the product is. It is a predominantly technology enabled word of mouth website,” added Spaly.

The site adds a lot of humor to shopping, and is sort of a Dennis Publishing-esque guy talk type of place where men can relate to the pants they are going to purchase. There is no pressure of the sales clerk telling them they look fabulous to make a commission. In fact ,they stand by their products so greatly that they have implemented a Partner Card for referals and the word of mouth mentality moves onward.

And the business does not just stop at quality product and fresh marketing. Both Spaly and Dunn take the business of environmental issues very seriously. They have figured out a way to keep both production costs and costs to the consumers low while using organic cotton whenever they can. “We have been pretty good about getting organic fibers into our line. Our t-shirts are 100% organic.

We speak to all of our contractors about organic options. It’s been really hard to find organic prints so we haven’t gotten there yet. None of the people in Asia that are part of our printing are making organic paint yet. The more you ask about it though and the more you request it there is more of a likelihood that people will provide it. We are willing to pay 10-20% more for the fabric if it means getting better quality and eco-friendly textiles.”

It is not only the pants though… “We don’t have a lot of packaging. We don’t put tags on stuff. We tend to give them a re-usable grocery bag that costs us a dollar, and it encourages them to actually use the bag, so it isn’t wasteful. We make our stuff in NYC so we save a ton of money compared to shipping from Asia, and we use a lot less energy in creating our entire line over any other men’s line,” notes Spaly.

They are currently focusing on web only sales and although they have had offers from major retailers, are concentrating on their personal vision, fun attitude and fit of the product, the company was named after a sex-crazed chimpanzee after all.

“Some good advice we got from a technology advisor who doesn’t really know about fashion, was ‘just target the guy you want to target and other people will want to be involved just because they like your vision.’ We like to monkey around, we are lovers not fighters, we are looking to have a good time, kind of like the Bonobos.”