50,000 Facebook Likes = 1/2 off Bonobos on 10/1/11
How much of these picks will be left when the day ends? Who knows. To their credit, Bonbos has been saying since they hit 50,000 fans that their stock was going to be limited the day of the sale. Half off is a huge amount and none of us knows their margins. But a new customer base this gigantic might be priceless in the eyes of Bonobos.
You only have today, 12:00am – 11:59pm EDT and if you forgot to get your code over the weekend via their facebook page, then you’re out of luck. The maximum amount of discount you can receive has been set at $250. So in theory you could pick up $500 worth of goods and shell out “only” $250. Here’s one way to potentially do just that, and remember, there’s no minimum spend requirement.
UPDATE: This has been a bit of a cluster. After their facebook page wrecked over the weekend not allowing many to get the code for the sale, the Bonobos website apparently crashed this morning when the sale went live. Stock appears to have been decimated, and with their switch to a new platform it’s no longer immediately clear what sizes are still available. That wasn’t the case with the old platform. Overall reaction to the sale on Facebook / Twitter hasn’t been real friendly, which is no surprise. Leave your take in the comments below…
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Bonobos Double Barrel Bull Denim – $49.00 ($98)
Ss close as you’re going to get to the now seemingly defunct 5-pocket canvas pant from Banana Republic. Their Bull Denim is, wait for it… denim… but not so heavy that they’re not easy to move in. Plus you get the Bonobos fit, shipping, and customer service.
Bonobos Hash Marks Sweater – $49.00 ($98)
Makes me almost wish I was a Bears fan. Almost (*cough* go Packers.) Anyway, orange and blue is a not used nearly enough color combination. Cotton / Merino wool blend should be ideal. Stripes go to the back as well.
Wolverine Clapton Boot – $77.50 ($155)
No they’re not from the Wolverine 1000 mile collection, but they appear to be much better looking than the $80 (for today only) price tag. Casual yes, but upgraded casual if you keep them polished and looking good.
Bonobos Check Republic Shirt – $49.00 ($98)
If you don’t live in the sun belt, you’re going to want a couple of things with some color for the upcoming fall and winter. After the 9th day in a row of nothing but clouds, wearing a white shirt under a black sweater & wool grey pants might put you over the edge. This is the answer. Would look perfect with a grey tweed sportcoat.
Bonobos Dark Heather Belt – $25.00 ($50.00)
Since you’ve shelved your brighter and lighter summer appropriate web belts for the next six months, this belt is as good as any to tide you over till spring.
Total Pre Code: $499 After Code: $249.50 Or, if you want to flex some luxury muscle, there’s this combo:
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Jack Spade David Brief – $187.50 ($375) & Bass Cordovan Cayman II – $65.00 ($130)
They say the fastest way to get from point A to point B is in a straight line. Or, shop for leather goods. You do go $5 over the max here, but that just means you don’t get 50% off that last $5.00. Again, there is no minimum spend requirement and as always, window/screen shopping is 100% free.
Note: This post fired off just before the sale went live. Some or all of the items shown above might be sold out. Did you take advantage of the sale? If so, what’d you snag? Leave your take on this Bonobos promotion below.
Is it just me or did the Bonobos site crash at midnight sharp? I had my cart ready to check out then got “problem loading page” for checkout, as well as any other pages on the site I tried to load.
Drew, bonobos.com did go down at the stroke of midnight. I had the same experience as you. Facebook is alive with complaints.
same
Same here, not surprising, but rather disappointing…
The site totally crashed right at midnight. It was ridiculous.
Not only did the site crash, but previous to the crash, apparently Bonobos pulled some of the nicer items out of stock..
Son, I am disappoint.
Funny, though, that exactly 1 minute before the sale started, they [Bonobos] commented on someone’s post: “we’re feelin pretty good about our servers.”Famous last words.
For the record, I checked the site slightly before the sale (and the crash) and the Wolverine boots had been marked as out of stock in all sizes. A shame, since they were one of the few really worthwhile items I spotted.
I don’t know if this sale is going to end up being good or bad for Bonobos. Obviously they’ve generated a lot of interest and they will get a lot of sales once the site gets back up, but it seems like they’ve also ticked a lot of people off, if their facebook wall is anything to judge by….
was this really unexpected – no. here’s hoping its up in the morning.
BACK UP
GO GO GO GO!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Oh snap.
Down again, Jay!
Yeah, I was looking at a pair of Sebago boots which were marked out of stock in all sizes (in fact, I checked all of Sebago’s stock and everything was marked out of stock).
To be fair, I can get those same boots for half of the price (same price after 50% off) elsewhere, but just trying to use some Bonobos credit I have accumulated.
This is my first time buying anything from the site. 50% off + LivingSocial voucher. Hopefully it’ll be back soon!
hopefully the item(s) you’ve been eyeing hasn’t been pulled out of stock before the sale
Bait & switch…They better do the right thing and up the ante on a new sale otherwise they lost me as a customer.
On the bright side, I just gave my code to some poor schlub on facebook. That’s me done for my good deed of the year – now back to plotting in my evil lair.
Meh, time to go to bed.
Have to work in the a.m.
Not worth it for me. I set a strict budget of using only my credit tonight, so if it’s not a huge deal if I don’t get to spend free money. I can still use it later, just get less free stuff..haha.
Happy Hunting, fellas.
What a joke. I’ve been ordering from them for years. Between outsourcing production to Asia and now these bait-and-switch tactics, I don’t think I’ll be shopping with them any longer.
fbook comments are ripe for “whiny customer” dapperification.
I hadn’t even planned on buying anything and I’m up way past my bedtime watching those wall posts fly by. So many lols.
I’m not sure it’s really a “whiny customer” phenomenon. Bonobos told people to show up at midnight Eastern. They did — and their site couldn’t handle it.
There’s disappointment…and then there’s whining/petulance/entitlement.
Took a bit of waiting, but finally got to purchase at 12:30 (pst)
Went with the “checkered past” shirt and “out of the box” was surprised that normal sizes were still in stock, though two different styles of shirts went out of stock while in my cart.
I soo wanted the Jambox for $100, but was sold out prior to the sale.
Bonobos is falling out of favor with me. I own a number of their chinos and stretch cottons, and some of them are beginning to show wear after just one or two washes (on delicate mind you!). I popped on early this morning to buy a few items with the facebook deal and everything I wanted was sold out, and they had pulled items from my cart, which is lame. I’m sure tomorrow or sometime very soon not only will those items be back in stock, they will probably be replaced with better looking fall options. Not enthralled.
Bonobos is frequently out of stock on many things. I selected 5 items, only one a sale item, and they were all out of stock. This has happened before so I’m not getting excited over them only to be let down, again.
Truly a great addition to their website would be a filter to only show items they have in stock. I had assumed this was what filtering for say, a shoe size did, but it apparently only filters for items that are made in that size, not ones they actually have that size of. (As this feature tends to work on other clothing retailers’ sites)
I persevered until after 3 EST and finally got my 3 pairs of wool pants… Can’t wait!
PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE tell me the code. I signed up and never got an e-mail with the code
guys.. they purposely pulled items from stock before the sale on so called “low margin” items. i’m sure jambox was one of them
The codes are individualized and one-use only.
Personally, I’m astounded at the number of facebook commenters who don’t seem to have understood how the whole promotion worked. “I’ve been a fan for a year and I didn’t get a code :'(” etc.
Like this, times a billion. I hate, hate, hate their current system. It wouldn’t be so bad if they weren’t perpetually understocked/out-of-stock. But the combination makes for a very frustrating shopping experience.
I couldn’t get a code at all despite following the instructions on their site.
My Pollenators were gone 🙁 Not that big a deal, but I still want them.
Just noting, I have noticed things being relisted on the website. Wrinkle-free shirts, for example, only had 3 types up…we’re up to 4 now.
This is definitely true. I had added a pair of gray boxer briefs at 6 PM PDT. At 9 PM PDT, they vanished from the site (not “out of stock” — the item was just gone). This morning, voila, back in all sizes. Do I care? No. But it confirms what you’ve noticed.
All in all, though, the hours I spent last night seem worth it. I wound up with 2 pairs of wool pants, 2 pairs of pinwale corduroys, 3 pairs of shorts, a pair of boxer briefs and a leather card holder. Net cost to me: $141.
if anyone needs a code, i’m not going to use mine. BONOFACE_DL847 . good luck!
It was indeed very entertaining to watch people bicker. Though many of the complaints sank to mere whining, finding fault with a 99% collapse in site functionality for roughly 3 hours was perfectly reasonable. While their customer service is laudable, I had to chuckle at comments from the die-hards attributing a mythos of generosity to the ‘ninjas,’ as if they lacked a profit-driven mindset, or that this was anything other than a marketing operation.
Sweet deal. I’m drowning in pants right now so I went for a few dress shirts and a fun pair of shoes.
Smooth sailing–got everything I wanted this morning, including the Check Republic shirt. Now to eagerly await the arrival–I hope their backend is better equipped to handle all this merch than their front end has been! Cheers to Bonobos for pulling off a pretty ambitious marketing promo–hope it helps them more than hurts. Curious to hear thoughts on whether this will gain them customers or drive them away?
And on that note, I’m also inclined to believe that as a company they must not be doing that well financially what with this apparent firesale these last several weeks. A half dozen coupon deals plus a huge 50% off sale? Smells like a company that might be in trouble to me–if you read the literature on the GroupOn-esque deals, they’re the opposite of money-makers for companies. Good to see Bonobos just rolled out a bunch of new products, but I hope that this isn’t the beginning of the end for them. What does everyone else think?
Yup, it was good fun on all sides. Both the “BONOBOS Y U RUIN MY LIFE” folks and the “DEATH TO THE NINJA HATERS” folks. There are all kinds of crazy out there in the world….
Appears that the Jambox by Jawbone is re-listed. Really tempting..
I just checked back at the site and the Wolverine Clapton boots are back in stock (it’s Ninja magic!), so I ordered up a pair along with some cords and Wurkin Stiffs. Just a heads-up for people who really wanted something only to see it disappear when the sale went live.
I think they can write off any losses as a massive marketing win.
That’s actually really remarkable. Restocking DURING a huge 50% off sale? That’s going above and beyond.
Ninjas just sent me a code after I emailed them. Picked up a nice shirt and chinos!
It’s a little disappointing. I definitely had my eye on something that strangely disappeared from the site a few hours ago. It looks to be back up now… but I’ve used up my code already, obviously.
Same here. Wish I could cancel and re-order, but whatever.
Hmm…
I know this may sound like a whiny customer but….:
The problem I have with so many items being pulled (and then re-listed) is that, on their facebook page prior to the sale, Bonobos stated emphatically (many times, might I add) that absolutely positively everything they had in stock would be up for grabs at half off. No exceptions.
Yet hours before the sale items were magically de-listed (only to return hours later).
There are 3 explanations for this that I can come up with:
1) An innocent computer glitch.
2) So many people ‘pre-loaded’ their carts that it forced some items out of stock (though, I don’t think thats it. I actually pre-loaded a cart and got an error message that it was all sold-out, so I don’t think they have any kind of in-cart reservation system).
3) They purposely pulled certain items to exclude from the same.
Now, they have the right to do what they want. They’ve been very generous with the sales, discounts, etc, so I can’t complain too much. I was still able to come away with something after waking up at 5am for work.
But, if number 3 is what really happened (which unfortunately is what it looks like), then that seems a little underhanded to me.
I just ordered the Wolverine boots since for that price it was a steal. I did have my eyes on them for a week but then saw that they were originally not available on the website before the sale began. However they eventually put the boots back, I ordered them and I am one happy customer.
My general feeling is that they intentionally pulled items to exclude them from the sale – which isn’t awesome, but seems fairly sensible given that they provided pretty ample warning about the limitations of the sale. I think after the crash and getting lots of angry customer comments, they may have put some of that stuff back online to try to mollify the legions of pissed-off shoppers.
Of course, that creates its own problem as it will inevitably piss off the folks who wanted to buy item A, but it was out of stock, so used their code on something else at 3 am… only to see item A reappear in stock a few hours later.
Yeah, I was a little bothered that I didn’t get my ‘item A’, but fortunately I was still able to snag 2 pair of pretty awesome shoes for a total of $48 out of pocket (the difference being store credit), so I’m certainly in no position to complain. All things considered, I fared pretty well.
I took advantage of that $120 worth of Bonobos stuff for $60 offer a while back, ended up buying and returning a suit. They just gave me a generic $120 account credit, which I was able to use with the 50% off promotion today, so really $240 worth of stuff for $60!
Some people definitely go overboard with the whining, but I don’t find it unreasonable to have complaints. Based on the # of “likes” of fb, Bonobos should have been able to anticipate traffic usage. People stayed up late and prepared. No reason not to let the company know they didn’t live up to their end of the bargain, at least initially. I say that as someone who didn’t complain, but just got up this morning (after I could’t get the site to work) and got what I wanted then.
Couldn’t order last night but I ordered today without a hitch. Placed my order at 1 pm EST w/o a problem. Took full advantage as I ordered just north of $500 in merch. For me it ended up being BOGO. The ninjas seemed to be in good spirits on FB. Too bad whiners are so prevalent. 50K people want 50% off and they want it now. MN EST and people are acting like its black friday. Jostling and pushing and complaining that they are not immediately 100% satisfied. Yarns being spun about conspiracies to keep them from getting their goodies. Good grief.
I don’t think it’s considered whining when a brand tells you: “Hey! Be ready!” and then you get ready and it’s still not there but then it is later on. Seems off to me. Makes you not want to listen to them the next time around for sure.
BONOFACE_DA875 free code here use it asap if you guys need it