There has been a lot of speculation about Bonobos’s ambitions as it settles in under a new ownership. The DTC menswear brand that was previously part of Walmart was sold to WHP Global and Express Inc., the latter of which eventually ended up in Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
With a new owner, Phoenix Retail, as of 2024, Bonobos has a renewed focus on understanding the consumer and brand positioning as it pushes to stay relevant amid growing competition and complex economical and political challenges.
With a brand new spring campaign featuring restaurant owner and entrepreneur Emilio Vitolo, alongside former professional soccer player Demit Omphroy, the retailer is trying to put its new vision into perspective for consumers.
“We wanted to open up our new fiscal year with a campaign that’s all about lightness and playfulness and ease, and it really ties together with our spring collection, just from a product standpoint. The design inspiration is around escapism and so we wanted to thread this along,” Bonobos CMO Krissie Millan told Retail Brew. “[But]...to bring this to life, we really needed to bring in talent that can help exhibit that.”
While the retailer continues to retain its core customer base, in a quest for relevance, the brand is also targeting a new generation of consumers. Millan describes them as a “little bit younger”—about age 25 to 34, living in urban areas, and with higher incomes. She added that while the demographics the retailer is targeting might be slightly different, the “personality and psychographic components of it are still pretty much the same as our existing customers.”
But focusing on this new crop of customers is not without thought and part of Bonobos’ larger strategy as it undergoes a brand refresh.
“When I joined about two and a half years ago, my biggest mandate was really trying to bring about how to increase relevance for the brand,” Millan explained. “Bonobos has always had a pretty loyal customer base…That said, it’s also already been 15-plus years since the brand had started, so there’s always been an evolution, obviously, in terms of what happens with the consumer base. For the brand to continue to grow, we needed to figure out and recruit this next generation of customers.”
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A key component of being able to appeal to this consumer base however is understanding them, for which the retailer has employed feedback systems. It has also had its eye on “social listening platforms” such as Reddit, Millan said, honing in on recognizing the brand’s hero products and content that resonates.
“We are not fashion forward, we're mostly function-forward,” she said. “We tend to really hone in on fit as our key product offering, and making sure that fit comes across and is basically represented across the different categories. Now that said, we do tend to have fashion styles that we release on a seasonal basis, and that’s when we really try to listen to our customers, to think about what are the different kinds of fit, for example, that might be more akin to what they want now.”
As it works off feedback to curate its design and styles, Bonobos also has its eye on the future, a bit more cautious this time and keenly aware of its shortcomings. In discussing its future, Millan reflected on the growth path for the retailer and its “biggest opportunity” at the moment: brand awareness.
“It's really just trying to get the brand in front of them and trying to let them know who we are, what we represent,” she said. “We represent fit—that we can give you as close to custom tailored clothing without the price tag, and that is ready to wear and so that it fits your personality and it fits your goals and your own behavior and your preferences…and that would be the foundation of growth for us over the next five years.”