In Bonobos, Brian Spaly Finds a Perfect Fit

[inline:slate]While Bros hold down jobs of all types, there is no career aspiration more common among us than the prospect of becoming a successful entrepreneur. What Bro hasn't had an idea for a new business and dreamed of making it big -- and yes, striking it rich? And so, every week, BroBible picks the mind of a successful Bro entrepreneur and discovers what it takes to turn a simple idea into a thriving business. You've already met Maverik Lacrosse's John Gagliardi, Tap'd Founder Craig Zucker, New York party promoters Derek and Daniel Koch, TOMS shoes founder Blake Mycoskie, sports agent Doug Eldridge, Hollywood agent Ben Press, YouRenew.com co-founder Rich Littlehale, and Tanteo Tequila founder Jonathan Rojewski. Up next is Brian Spaly, who co-founded the trousers company Bonobos with his fellow Stanford Business School graduate Andy Dunn. Although these "awesome-fitting trousers" are sold exclusively through the company's website, Bonobos have in just a few years become an established and well-respected name in men's fashion. BroBible spoke with Spaly recently about all things Bonobo: from eliminating "Khaki Diaper Butt" to lessons learned at Stanford to the key to working with a business partner who also happens to be one of your best friends. BroBible: You went to Stanford to get your MBA, and walked out with a pants company? How did that happen? Brian Spaly: Stanford is a place where MBA students all seem to have some idea or another about a business they want to start. While most don't pursue this dream right away after school, the environment is favorable and encouraging to entrepreneurship. My idea was to make better-fitting pants and capitalize on the fact that sooner or later, guys were going to get tired of only wearing jeans. This was an easy one to start on a small scale, and when I made a few pairs of pants, my classmates seemed really excited about buying them and wearing them around. And they wanted more. So I didn't have much of a choice but to start growing and selling them out of the back of my car. What's different about Bonobos than the typical trousers we buy at Banana Republic or the ones that we see in all the crazy photo shoots in GQ? Our fit is better, for almost all guys, regardless of their body type. We lavished attention on the design and figured out a way to make a better, contoured waistband that better approximates the male anatomy. The fit through the thigh is trimmer than you will find in most mass market pants, which makes most guys look taller and slimmer. But it's not cut ridiculously thin to fit the super star fashion models you will see in most fashion mags. We're in between the mass market, with their frumpy, one-size-fits-all fit, and the super high end brands that are quite expensive and designed for runway models. Other than the way Bonobos actually fit, what's your driving design aesthetic? What's your best piece of style advice for a guy who wants to step up his fashion game? If wearing a pair of Bonobos is step one, what's step two?

Great questions! I think our aesthetic is modern, sophisticated, jaunty, and streamlined. It's driven my own desire to find trousers that look great, last a long time, and are made of the highest quality fabrics. I want our pants to be stylish and sexy for years, not just for a few wears in any given season. We don't follow fashion trends so much as following the ideal that our customers want to look good, and want to be able to count on us season after season for high quality, excellent service, a great shopping experience, and an ironclad guarantee behind our products. The best way a guy can step up his fashion game is to get rid of everything that doesn't fit him well, and focus on building around a handful of excellent fitting trousers. I also think that most men need to get better shoes -- a few pairs of colorful boat shoes and sneakers, and one or two high end Italian loafers -- Gucci, Prada, Tod's, Ferragamo are all superb and will last a long time. I think there should be a flight to quality -= stop buying a lot of stuff and focus instead on a few key items that look great with many different looks. Build from there. [inline:touch]Why is the company online only? How have you ensured that the shopping process is just as smooth as it typically is in a store? Any plans at all to sell Bonobos in a brick-and-mortar shop or are you committed to online only for the long haul? Andy (Dunn, our CEO) and I have a vision to help change the way men shop. Andy is a superb internet entrepreneur and he feels strongly about this -- our role models are Zappos and Amazon more than the famous fashion houses. We admire the way they listen to customers, offer excellent convenience and service, and are able to serve up a great product all over the world rather than just in urban centers. Sometimes I am tempted to build a store because I'd love to have the daily interaction with customers and the chance to design one, but Andy keeps me in check. We'll stick with online only as long as it's working, and as long as we can continue to find ways to acquire new customers in new geographies. We have a long way to go before we run out of potential customers to acquire judging by the amount of Khaki Diaper Butt (KDB) we see kicking around in our neighborhood in Manhattan alone. What do you and your partner-in-crime Andy Dunn each bring to the company? How do you balance the responsibilities and each others' personalities and passions? Is it a smart move to launch a company with one of your best friends? We find that working together is like being married. Awesome most of the time but more hard work than it might seem. And certainly there are challenging times. We communicate well, and that seems to carry us forward in a positive direction despite our disagreements and the friction and static that comes with both of us being opinionated and confident. We have different skills, but we have a shared vision. There is so much to do in a startup like ours that there is plenty of work to go around, even for the leaders of the company. As for working with a best friend: I imagine we are not unique in that we have had to put our friendship on the back-burner at times and put the professional relationship and priorities at the forefront. But we know we are chasing the same goal, and we have the exact same incentives. It helps that we met in B-school and had many opportunities to calibrate our business intuition and judgment -- we think alike in many areas and in those where we differ I think we bring a creative and strategic tension to the business that drives better decisions over the long run. Other than meeting Andy, what was the single most important piece of business wisdom that you learned at Stanford? What do you wish a professor had told you back while you were still in school that would have really come in handy? Oh boy -- there were so many great lessons about entrepreneurship that we learned at Stanford. One would have to be "fail fast, cheaply." Which means get out there and try your idea and see it if works, rather than doing too much bookwork and business plan writing. This served us well -- it's how we got our start. Another would be to focus on the size of the pie, rather than the size of your own slice. We take this to mean that we should try to build a big company and give equity away to our employees in order to create the incentives for success that we have ourselves. My impression is that many fashion companies are owned entirely by the famous designer or entrepreneur, and most employees are not owners of the business. We run Bonobos like a Silicon Valley startup -- everyone that comes in gets stock options, and we've reserved a big chunk of the company for our employee incentive program. We think this creates the right environment when so many people are working so hard day in and day out. [inline:shorts]What's been the biggest challenge you guys have faced so far? I'd say our biggest challenges have been figuring out ways to get our customers comfortable purchasing trousers on the web without trying them on, and staying focused on our core market of men's trousers. There are so many fun ideas for new products, new designs, etc. and there are many markets (such as women's fashion) that are much larger to go after. We're staying focused and expanding at a measured pace. I hope it works! That said, we launch swimsuits this month and polos next month and our team is fired up about the new products and excited to show them to all of our customers. What advice do you have for an aspiring entrepreneur? Make sure you are in it for the right reasons. Andy and I started Bonobos because we wanted to build an innovative company and solve a problem that we had ourselves. We didn't do it just to become entrepreneurs or to try to get rich. The rewards come, for us, in the form of the process and the day-to-day challenges and excitement that come with being in a small company with a great team. The more authenticity you can bring to your endeavor, the more you will enjoy the actual process, rather than the outcome of great personal wealth that you often read about but that in practice is rare. What's next for Bonobos? Swimsuits, polos, and some awesome new products this fall. We're thrilled to expand our product a bit and hope that our customers get excited about this as well.