Is Bonobos paving the way for e-commerce showrooms?


Clearly a fan of showrooming as long as it leads to their own website, Bonobos Inc. has announced plans to have 40 "Guideshops" open nationwide by 2016.
The Manhattan-based men’s clothing specialist currently operates 10 Guideshops. These shops allow customers to try on Bonobos merchandise and make assisted purchases online while in the location. Each shop has only enough space to display a limited range of men’s pants, shirts and suits in addition to the fitting room and the promise of one-on-one attentive service. With Bonobos.com serving as a virtual stockroom, investment in real estate for these "e-commerce stores" is minimal, with locations ranging up to 1,500 square feet.
The seven-year old e-tailer first began opening Guideshops in 2011.
"We said we would never be offline, and then, wait a second," Andy Dunn, the co-founder and chief executive of Bonobos, told The New York Times. "We hit a big turning point. We realized offline really works."
Since the Guideshops opened, Bonobos has cut online marketing expenses in half as in-store purchases have increased. "Customer reaction to the model has been overwhelming," said Mr. Dunn in a statement. Suits sell at twice the rate at the Guideshops as online and dress shirts at a 50 percent higher clip.
"Customers are loving the look, feel and fit of our suits and dress shirts, and Guideshops have removed the friction of buying them over the web," said Dwight Fenton, VP of design at Bonobos, in a statement.
The news of the ramped-up expansion came as Bonobos secured another round of financing, bringing the firm’s total funding to $128 million. In February, AYR.com, the company’s first women’s brand, was launched.
Other e-commerce players that have recently opened stores that to varying degrees act like e-commerce showrooms include Birchbox, Warby Parker, Piperlime, Indochino and Harry’s.
- Men’s clothing brand Bonobos picks up $55 mln Series – Bonobos
- Birchbox, Seller of Beauty Products, Steps Out From Web With a Store – The New York Times (tiered sub.)
- From its e-commerce roots, Bonobos plans real-world expansion – New York Business Journal
- Bonobos Showrooms Itself – RetailWire
Are the benefits of operating physical locations for e-tailers beginning to outweigh the drawbacks? Will e-commerce showrooms like Bonobos become increasingly common in the years ahead?
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14 Comments on "Is Bonobos paving the way for e-commerce showrooms?"
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I believe this is a significant opportunity for online retailers. Brick-and-mortar retailers currently have one advantage over online-only, namely providing a sensory experience. If online adds offline, then the retailer can provide the best of both worlds—a sensory experience and online convenience.
In addition, showrooms, or physical space retail options, provide the online retailer with an opportunity to maximize these assets by offering the showrooms as click and collect points. The customer has maximum convenience and the retailer has a customer visiting the showroom for pickup but also to browse/purchase other merchandise in an inviting atmosphere.
Bonobos is riding the wave of Omni-channel consumers who shop any time and everywhere. The current statistics indicate that the consumers webroom (shop online and purchase in store) as much as showroom.
For personal items, particularly apparel, consumers want to touch the fabric and try things on for size. Hointer jeans store is another variation of a store model that allows consumers to see jeans literally hanging from the ceiling so they can shop by phone app.
The key to Omni-channel offline store strategy is to keep the stores very small and efficient. Bonobos stores only range in size up to 1500 square feet. There needs to be enough product on display to enable consumers to sample styles and quality, but the profit comes from fulfilling through the “endless aisle” made possible by online supply and distribution.
Going from pure digital presence to a physical entails risk along cost, systems and store labor. Bonobos’ venture in Guideshops is clever as it builds on their established online brand and product quality without traditional investment in real estate and inventory. The doubling of suit sales via Guideshop speaks to the value of a hands-on, tailor-to-fit needs of some products that are best “suited” to the physical world.
Bonobos discovered that their business can grow faster with two parts online and one part brick-and-mortar. The future is a hybrid one, each retailer will find the right mix to leverage existing assets as they keep up with consumers’ purchase behavior.
There are numerous advantages to operating retail stores, if you can do it well. This quarter we’ve seen amazing data that shows how much Best Buy and Walmart have been able to reduce their shipping costs and increase their speed of delivery by using stores as fulfillment centers.
In the case of Bonobos the stores are pure showrooms (no live inventory for sale), which we’re seeing become increasingly popular (Bonobos, TrunkClub, Warby Parker, Google, etc.)
Not only do the Guideshops give Bonobos a personal connection with its customers and allow them to deliver a level of service that would be difficult to do digitally (fitment, etc.) but the brick and mortar locations also serve as powerful marketing vehicles for the website. It’s not uncommon to see digital traffic go up 10 time from geography after a business owns a showroom or flagship retail store in that geography.
One last time: there are no such things as channels. There is only a buyer, a seller and a path toward transaction.
As far as the question literally goes, what drawbacks? eBay has proved kiosks help its business. Amazon used to deliver to 7-Eleven stores in Tokyo. Click and pick retailers have demonstrated the advantages of multiple distribution venues. So, what’s the downside as long as there is no over-investment in physical facilities?
As to the second question, of course they will, provided they continue to represent a value to the consumer.
It really is a question of execution. I’ve been to a Bonobos Guideshop, and the in-store experience definitely lives up to the online experience in terms of customer service. The service feels concierge level, and the store design and display embody the brand image. There is no disconnect between online and offline. It’s easy to imagine that given the limited investment in the store (because of small size and limited inventory) the showrooms are very profitable.
I’ve also been to another pure play store, and it was very obvious that the retailer was unable to translate the online experience in an offline environment. The retailer missed on basics like having adequate staffing during peak shopping periods. The experience was so frustrating that it diminished my willingness to shop from the online store.
To quote a famous BrainTrustee, again: “There are no such things as channels. There is only a buyer, a seller and a path toward transaction.”
In the long run, the issue isn’t about e-tailers. It is about retailers. If there was never a brick-and-mortar store, but retailing started with the online concept and one imagined opening a geographical location to serve their customers better, wouldn’t this be the model? Small space, limited inventory; focus on the customer and drive them to the website. If using the brick-and-mortar environment captures a customer that will be forever ordering online, isn’t that a win? NO! Its a HUGE win!
The real question is, “why isn’t every brick-and-mortar retailer seeing this?” It would massively improve the bottom line, massively improve turns, massively improve ROI and greatly simplify management of the company.
Ever bought a custom-made suit from Hong Kong? Same concept except you pay someone else to do the measuring. Nothing really new here, just a way of using the internet to make the process a little quicker.
According to Fits.me “It is no secret that an online retailer has to make a sale twice—once when the customer orders the item, and again when the customer opens the package.” Which translates to more than 70% of garments purchased online being returned due to fit issues.
While over 80% of shoppers webroom and choose the retailer they would like to visit, they still make the 99% of their apparel purchases offline. Bonobos has figured out that while shopping for apparel online may appear convenient, the reality is that fit issues and returns have a cost.
Bonobos has realized that the fitting room is the most important square footage in an apparel retail store and is focusing their offline experience on it. Smart.
Clothing, obviously, is the type of personalized item that is most risky to buy online, particularly when you’re unfamiliar with the fit, style, etc. of the vendor (ah for the good ole days when companies made their own products, and quality didn’t change with each order!). So for this type of e-business, showrooms make a lot of sense, and I expect we’ll see more of them; for motor oil or pet food or music, not so much.
Bonobos is more than an e-tailer, and its growth though multiple channels, both its own and through retailers such as Nordstrom, underscores that retail is not an either/or proposition. Of course Amazon is the prime exception, but even Amazon is continuing to evolve its brick-and-mortar strategy, even without true “stores.”