Bonobos CEO Andy Dunn talks Walmart and e-commerce strategy
In 2007, Bonobos was one of the first retailers to begin selling clothing exclusively online. Four years later it launched brick and mortar Guideshops, where you try clothes on, but everything is shipped to you. Then in June, Walmart acquired Bonobos for $310 million.
"There's a couple of paths you can take with the company. You could go public or you can do a sale. And for us, we always thought we'd go public," Bonobos founder and CEO Andy Dunn said. "And then Walmart came along, and Marc Lore, who's the founder of Jet, guy I've known a long time, said let's go build the leading collection of digital brands out there, and it was too good to resist."
Dunn is now also the senior vice president of digital consumer brands at Walmart eCommerce. Other brands under the company's umbrella include Jet, ModCloth, Shoes.com and Moosejaw.
Dunn said digital retail used to be about selling other people's brands. But through Bonobos, he was able to show that "you could build a brand online."
"Now we figured out this offline extension, so as the pioneer in that, the chance to go scale that up and do it across a collection is what really excited us," Dunn said.
While one e-commerce strategy has been to have a single big website, Dunn said he's learning from the Walmart brands that "it's about an ecosystem."
"It's not about just one place people are going shop online, it's shopping with the sites that they really love," Dunn said.
With competitors like Amazon continually expanding their business as well, Dunn said they're not in it just to survive.
"We want to win. And we think that this is a really interesting and different way to win. When someone's zigging, you've got to zag, and I think customers still love brands. Brands are not going away."