Style News: Dozens laid off at Bonobos

WSJ: Bonobos lays off “a few dozen” to try to stem e-commerce losses

Remember when Walmart bought Bonobos for $310 million, soon after also purchasing Jet, Moosejaw and ModCloth?

Maybe it’s not working out so hot.

Bonobos laid off “dozens” of employees yesterday. The brand has around 600 employees. So, if “dozens” minimum = 24 (that’d be two dozen folks) then that’s about 4%, minimum, of its workforce.

According to the Wall Street Journal piece:

“Walmart has said losses in its e-commerce division, which includes Bonobos, will be higher this fiscal year than last.”

That’s saying something. It’s rough out there in retail right now, but e-commerce on the slide? Isn’t that where everyone is supposed to be going?

Allegedly, Walmart had discussed selling Bonobos earlier this year. And Modcloth has already been sold off for less than half of what they paid for it. And I guess there’s a personal shopping service called JetBlack in Walmart’s e-commerce portfolio, that’s losing $15,000 per member, annually.

I don’t know what that means for those of us who frequent this website. Does that mean less sales and promos? If people aren’t buying enough Bonobos, keeping prices high and limiting sales and promotions doesn’t seem like the answer? Their full retail prices are already *ouch* worthy for a lot of us. Cut the promos and the every so often discounts, and we’ll have to look elsewhere.

I just hope Bonobos isn’t collateral damage to an e-commerce portfolio that might have been grossly mismanaged in other ways (see the “Jetblack” service that’s literally costing the company $15k per customer per year).

But, what do I know. I don’t make pants. I write about pants. And those two things are extremely different.

Big thanks to our man Adam T. as well as Zachary F. for the tips.

Shown here: The Bonobos Travel Jean. Pic seemed appropriate.