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Meet Ed!
marshall — November 12, 2008 @ 4:57 pm
Ed’s been at this for a long time.
The first machine he worked on was a Commodore 64 and he built his first website on Geocities in 1995 (back when you were lucky to get a single megabyte of storage).
Flash forward: a computer engineering degree from Georgia Tech, five years as senior developer for a web firm in Atlanta, a relocation to New York City, and Ed Samour is the new Director of Technology for Bonobos!
Ed and I ducked out of the HQ trouser tempest for a quick coffee break yesterday, and I got to find out a little more about his plans to take Bonobos.com to awesome new heights.
Q: Overall, what excites you about technology?
A: How fast it’s changing. What’s new and popular today will be outdated tomorrow, and it requires new, specific skill sets. The challenge of keeping up makes it exciting.
Q: What are your goals for Bonobos?
A: Providing a great customer experience! Specifically, we’ve got to unify what’s happening online with the offline world, build an infrastructure that integrates all systems–the website, our order fulfillment system, the customer service platform–they all have to be in sync. When we take that to the next level it’ll really set us apart.
Q: I know from experience that streamlining customer service processes makes everyone’s life easier.
A: Yes. Ultimately technology should improve our lives and the user experience. It should make it easier to buy our products, or exchange them. Soon all the ninjas will have instant, coordinated access to customer correspondence and order history, so customer service issues can be addressed and resolved even quicker.
Q: How do you feel about robots?
A: I love robots. I look forward to the day when everyone gets to have their own.
Q: Like Bicentennial Man?
A: More like WALL·E. Robin Williams was kind of in the uncanny valley in that one.
Q: The what?
[At this point in our conversation my curiosity got the better of my note-taking as Ed and I took a hard digression into a discussion of the uncanny valley. It involved several detailed napkin-drawn diagrams and quizzical looks from our neighboring Starbucks-goers.] One thing’s for sure–we’re psyched to have Ed on the team. His first order of business is giving our website a major upgrade with respect to user interface and design. At Bonobos.com 2.0, we’re going to do an even better job of anticipating your questions and taking care of your needs! Want a sneak peek? Check it out!
Anything in particular you’d like to see on Bonobos.com? Let us know–we’ve got the man for the job.
I’d like to be able to prepay for an exchange where the new pair costs more in order to make the process more efficient.
I’d like to see a sort by release date. That way I can see the latest ones.
Looks like the current search/filter feature only allows for 1 field at a time. So I can find all size 33 pants, or I can find all black pants, but I can’t find all size 33 black pants. That would be some nice functionality.
I know that mockup’s just for the front page, but for the interior pages, where you list the pant styles, I’d love a block with a color swatch next to each name. When I’m on a specific page (say, the Destros page), it’d be nice to be able to scan down the list of other wool pants and know what color each one is.
Awesome ideas, guys. We have great plans for the Web site and I’m really looking forward to making your online shopping experience as excellent as the pants we sell. Thanks for being fans of Bonobos!
1. Do you think it would be possible to display all of the active styles on one page? I understand that the list may be growing, but including that option would be great.
2. I like the cool liners in Bonobos, but when I get up in the morning, I pick the pants I’m going to wear based on what the outside looks like. Do you think you could feature the outside view of the pants more than the pants with the liners. I think that of the two rows in the mock up above, the first one (”Shop by fabric”) is much more user friendly than the second row. I do think that, when viewing the individual page for a certain pair, the other views with the liner are very helpful.
Congrats Ed!!!
[…] new Director of Technology has been working nonstop with our web development team to bring us the next generation of […]
Great work dude, let’s rock the blog template next….
Hey Ben.
The German here.
cool business, nice website.
Want to order a “awesome fitting trouser”… not too tight. what style you recommend? you ship to Germany?
the stuff looks nice, will show it around over here.
hope you are fine…
cheers.
sorry, i know this does not belong in this blog, had no idea to contact you otherwise..