Bonobos

We get the question all the time: “I don’t have much of a butt—will Bonobos work for me?”

The ninjas enthusiastically answer, every time: Yes! Getting rid of frumpy superfluous fabric helps the slender and callipygian alike! But don’t take our word for it—read what #1 Bonobos fan Bob wrote to our CEO, Andy Dunn:

Andy replied:

Hi Bob!

This is terrific feedback. We actually set it up this way… we try to keep styles where there are only a few units of inventory left in only a handful of sizes off of the main store to mitigate disappointment for how few are left. But then, when people are searching by size, we know that if they click that style, they’ll be happy with what they’ve found. Clearly, we’re creating confusion though and some frustration for someone like yourself, who doesn’t understand why this happens or views it as an error when there’s actually some intentionality behind it.

We need better technology to explain ourselves better, so that customers can clearly search by styles which are fully stocked, ones where the stock is dwindling, and then place pre-orders for styles out of stock but which are coming back. We’re hard at work hiring a great technology/development team so we can deliver a best-in-class online user experience for this express purpose.

Your feedback on the butt thing is amazing, as this is exactly the dynamic that my cofounder and I have on Bonobos. He has hockey butt and the Bonobos make that work for him, whereas I have a syndrome called HIGB (Half-Indian Guy Butt), so I fall into your cousin’s camp. I’ve never seen a customer put it into words like that so I’m grateful that you did!

Thanks for being a Bonobos enthusiast.

—Andy

What do you think, gents? How could we improve the search functionality on our webstore?

Stephen J. Dubner, co-author of the awesomely popular book Freakonomics (and an unfailingly entertaining blog of the same name, where recent topics have included discussions of why a Kentucky Fried Chicken franchise might moonlight in pothole-filling and what six-word motto best describes America) flipped Bonobos a thumbs-up today for our Superfreakonomics, beautiful brown wool dress trousers whose name pays homage to the sequel of his book, due out (hopefully!) sometime this year.

We took a good, hard look at the history of trousers, and were not thrilled with what we saw. So we started our own pants company, condensed the preceding milennia into a two-minute cartoon, and posted it here.(Check out our Facebook page for a few more videos, shot and submitted by our awesome customers!)Any more cool videos you’d like to see from Bonobos? Fashion tutorials? Snippets of life from Bonobos HQ, center of the trouser universe? Let us know and we might just make it happen!

Can you believe that the last time that we surveyed our customers about anything was back when Brian was trying to figure out the pants-buying patterns of the guys in his class at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business? Until a few weeks ago, that was the truth!

We sent out a survey to all of the email subscribers (if you’re not on our list, you can sign up here or at the bottom left of our home page or product pages.

To find out from our customers and friends what products they would like us to make in the future, we asked about everything from shorts, swimsuits, and polos (on the near horizon); to dress shirts (on the long horizon); to suits and tuxedos, personal care products, hovercraft, Segways, and more.

The results were truly fascinating and have helped our management team think about what to make next and with what degree of urgency. It was awesome to see such an amazing response rate, too! Over 600 survey respondents in a few days. As a thank-you, I picked a handful of those respondents to win a free pair of Bonobos! As promised, here are the names of the winners, with the pairs that we’re sending:

Craig Mische: Turqs

Michael Calabrese: Shoguns

Edward Cahais: Pink Party Starters

Keoni Mahelona: Capertons

Charlie Walton: Turqs

We’re sending this out in the mail today. Congrats, gents!

Again, keep an eye out for future promotions, surveys, etc. by signing up for our mailing list! We only send out a few emails a month, so we certainly won’t be spamming you. Thanks again to everyone!

—Dave

Chief of Staff, Marketing Ninja

A great pair of pants can change your entire outlook. Just ask Mike—his Bonobos inspired him to make some awesome changes.  

In your first year or two out of college, you feel important and exceptional when traveling for work. But you may eventually tire of this image. After 2-3 years of racking up starpoints, miles, memorized airport acronyms, and facility with Hertz Neverlost, you may start to realize that the image of a business traveler is not that sexy, and not that you.

But financial exigencies and professional aspirations may force you to keep on traveling for work. As such, we’ve developed a few strategies for helping you look cool and avoid the corporate douche-bag (CDB) moniker as you adventure through the O’Hares and LAXs of the world.

1. Never carry a briefcase. Unless it’s made of brushed light silver aluminum, handcuffed to your wrist, and filled with cash.
2. Trade Bluetooth headset for aviators.

3. Never open Powerpoint on your computer, unless you have the privacy shade on your screen.

4. If you are sitting next to an attractive seat companion, open the in-flight magazine and start checking off all the countries on the world map, as if noting the places you have visited. Color up all of the map except for east sub-saharan Africa and then make a list of notes next to it like: August 2009 safari? Rally Car World Cup 2010? It’s unlikely you’ll be mistaken for a young accountant if you do this. In this case, it’s super helpful to be wearing a leather jacket from this year’s Indy 500 pace car team. If that jacket has a lot of neon and is made of tyvek, you are even safer.

5. Don’t shop at Kenneth Cole. We think they have a special co-promo deal with Accenture. Actually, we’re pretty sure Accenture owns Kenneth Cole, and Dockers, and Jos. A Bank.

6. When you check into your hotel, ask these three questions:

1. Do overnight guests need to be announced?

2. Does the hotel gym have a boxing ring?

3. Is there a shuttle service to the underground sprinkler convention?

7. It’s never okay to clip a cell phone to your belt. The only acceptable belt-clippable items are grappling hooks, light sabers, work gloves, and beer holsters.

8. Whenever possible, duck into the airport bathroom on the way to your return flight and change into ripped jeans, cowboy boots, killer shades, and an 80s hair band wig. Pass through the smoking lounge and then wipe your sleeve on the beer-soaked table top at the airport bar next to your gate, and you’ll have transformed into a rockstar in under 5 minutes. Heads will turn and eyes will stare as you walk down the aisle. Autograph a few boarding passes, gracefully accept free drinks from idolatrous stewardesses, and mumble incoherently whenever you face a direct query about who you are. (Once a stewardess thought I was that Australian doctor from House and I spent the next six hours eating freshly baked cookies and filet mignon while sipping champagne in a spontaneously upgraded first class seat.)

9. Stage faux-calls that diffuse any business-y suspicions: “Oh hey Keanu—no, I’m sorry, Paris and I can’t make it tonight,” or “Hey Condi. Jagerbombs later? Or are you sick of bombs?”

10. Any time you are picking up a rental car, simply walk to the coolest car, get in, and start driving off the lot. You’d be surprised how many times you’ll end up with a bitchin’ Nissan Z, a Hummer, or an Escalade for the price of a Chevy enema.

I received a pair of Graham Slackers as a gift from a friend—he turned me onto your website and I saw the page about the Band of Brothers. I’m a 3rd grade teacher, and I’m getting married in June! I met my fiance during my first year of teaching and I have attached a photo of the two of us.

When working with children all day, I have to have that casual feel to my clothes and your pants are perfect for that.

I really like to dress nice at work and I incorporated those Bonobos into my work attire. I found that they work great for the professional look but also have the casual feel. When working with children all day, I have to have that casual feel to my clothes and your pants are perfect for that. The governor of this fine state has put into motion a 6% pay decrease for all state employees, including teachers. Loving your pants as much as I do, I am now worried that with the wedding and the pay decrease, I won’t be able to purchase more than a pair or two. Even though my students are only third-graders, I take a lot of pride in introducing them to nice clothes. I teach in a very poverty-stricken neighborhood and relating to these students on any kind of personal level is an extremely important part of my job. I feel like it is never too early to learn about girls, air guitar, and fashion. My students and I love your pants!

Patrick Higgins

Hosea Rosenberg, winner of the most recent season of Top Chef (which was filmed in New York City for the first time this year), stopped by Bonobos HQ last Saturday to pick up some of the slickest trousers in the Big Apple. He’s got a whirlwind of public appearances coming up, so keep an eye out for him, and see if he’s sporting his Capertons, Cordistans, Ganache (fitting for a chef!) or ultra-luxurious Truth.

Humble and amiable, Hosea and our crew had a great time chatting about food, trousers, and the mind-numbing boredom of being sequestered in a Brooklyn loft for six weeks. Check out Hosea below, with Director of Operations Adam, Chief of Staff Dave, and Senior Ninja John!

(Fancying myself something of a Bobby Crocker, I whipped up a double-batch of my best steel-cut oatmeal raisin cookies with chopped walnuts and brought them to HQ for a celebrity critique, and he offered me some terrific feedback. Anybody want the recipe?)

When a man discovers Bonobos, many former go-to pieces of his wardrobe fall by the wayside—sometimes instantaneously.

Last week a former wrestler and member of the United States Navy was in town with friends and stopped by Bonobos HQ to try our pants. He stood about 5′11″, with broad shoulders and redwood quads. We knew right away that one of our great stretch corduroys would be the best fabric to flatter his muscular build. Corduroy gets a bad rap for its OshKosh B’Gosh heritage here in the U.S., but with its fine waling and rich softness, ours is truly a luxury fabric, imported from Valencia.

This gent tried the Samurai, our navy midweight corduroy with a straight-leg cut, and looked phenomenal in the dark brown loafers and slate gray polo shirt he’d worn to HQ. (Prefer the boot cut? No worries—the Shoguns‘ reign continues when they’re restocked later this week!)

So enthralled by his new pants, he decided to wear them out right out of HQ for the rest of his day on the town, so I pinned up the hem for him and offered a bag for the khakis he’d just made obsolete.

“Nah,” he said. “I’ll just round-file ‘em.”

With that, he balled up the baggy old khakis and sank them into our wastebasket with the decisive finesse of Devin Harris.

It was awesome.

What does Bonobos have in common with maple-and-bacon-roasted almonds and a full-blown shooting range nestled quietly in a Flatiron office building?

We’re the best in New York. Piggybacking off an awesome write-up in the New York Times, New York magazine has singled out Bonobos (alongside the city’s best exterminator and DIY beermaking course) in its annual “Best of” issue.

So if you live in (or ever visit) New York City, be sure to stop by Bonobos HQ to pick up some rad trousers. Then take your significant other to Smith & Mills, the number one New York date spot, where the ginger beer in your dark and stormy is home-brewed and delicious.