Bonobos Co Founder And CEO Andy Dunn Shares Her Entrepreneurial Experience

April 17th, the US retail giant

(Wal-Mart) the Internet is under negotiation.

Brand Bonobos, the negotiations between the two sides have come to an end.

(see related reports: WAL-MART is buying the Internet men's wear brand.

The negotiation is at the final stage.

Bonobos co founder and CEO Andy Dunn recently shared their entrepreneurial experience in an interview.

Bonobos, founded in 2007 by Brian Spaly and Andy Dunn, a graduate of Stanford University business school, is headquartered in New York. At the early stage of its establishment, only men's formal trousers were sold online, and then gradually extended to formal shirts, ties, belts and jackets.

The product is designed by Brian Spaly.

According to the world clothing and shoe net, in November last year, Bonobos will carry out a new round of financing with a total value of about $100 million, and the overall valuation of the company will be about $500 million.

By that time, Bonobos's total financing amounted to more than US $125 million.

Bonobos is one of the pioneers of Internet fashion brands entering the traditional retail industry.

As early as 2012, the pilot of physical retailing (Nordstrom, a high-end department store) has been launched, but in the past two years, it has really begun to focus on the promotion of physical stores.

Bonobos's shop is called Guideshop. There is no stock in the store. Customers can try it on at the experience store first and then buy it online.

At present, the guide store has opened more than 30 cities in Chicago, New York and Atlanta, and has planned to launch 100 in 2020.

Bonobos was once named "one of the hottest brands in the United States" by Advertising Age. It was named "best men's trousers brand" by New York Magazine. It was awarded the title of "20 best Facebook homepage" and "Best Workplace in New York" in 2011 and 2013 respectively.

Ten years ago, when two people started the Bonobos, many people thought they were crazy. Everyone felt that no one would buy clothes on the Internet. At that time two people even drove their cars to sell pants on campus.

Now, industry analysts consider the Internet as the leading brand of Bonobos as the biggest threat to traditional fashion chain retailers.

Andy Dunn said that he was not at all cool with fashion at first, so he always felt worried when he chose a proper suit.

And Bonobos has solved the problem of male consumers. Their customers not only have strong fashion sense, but also have the same difficulties as people who choose to dress.

Therefore, the service concept of Bonobos is that it is no longer difficult for men to pick clothes.

Looking back ten years ago (2007), men's online direct selling was almost an unrealistic idea. No one thought Amazon could sell clothes like this.

The ideal of Andy Dunn is not only to sell clothes on the Internet, but also to create an Internet brand with higher brand recognition than offline.

Five years later, he and his partner not only proved that this crazy ideal was feasible, but also began to practice the entity pilot store.

Andy Dunn describes the excitement he felt when he first saw the pants designed by Brian Spaly.

He said that when he put on those pants, he felt a strong interest, instead of wearing pants in the usual sense of trousers.

This brings him great business opportunities.

At that time, Facebook and Twitter were just rising in Silicon Valley. Andy Dunn also wanted to be an Internet entrepreneur.

And these pants designed by friends Brian Spaly can be sold online.

At the same time, Andy Dunn believes that they can provide better customer service, tailored tailoring and more size selection so that they can get a broader customer base than traditional fashion brands.

In this way, two people began to sell the pants designed by Brian Spaly in the campus, and one day they were surprised to find that they had accumulated tens of thousands of dollars and could really start their own business.

The next problem is to pick and sell products.

The two entrepreneurs went wrong in this step - they chose to sell swimsuits.

Andy Dunn recalled that they thought the design of the printed pattern used in the trousers pocket lining would be a selling point, but it turned out that the sales of these bathing suits were very small.

They stock up a lot of swimsuit stocks, but they have no courage to deal with them at low prices.

It even plagued them for five years.

From the experience of failure, the lesson of Andy Dunn's conclusion is that design is important, but the most important thing is to find the most suitable product at the beginning.

This has played an important guiding role in the operation of Bonobos.

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