Wal-Mart Buys Online Retailer Bonobos for $310 Million
June 16 2017 - 9:24AM
Dow Jones News
By Imani Moise
Wal-Mart Stores Inc. on Friday said it struck a deal to buy
menswear retailer Bonobos for $310 million in cash, the latest in a
string of recent acquisitions by Wal-Mart with its new e-commerce
chief.
Wal-Mart bought Jet.com Inc. for $3.3 billion last September,
putting Jet.com founder Marc Lore at the head of the retail giant's
sluggish U.S. e-commerce operations.
Bonobos Chief Executive Andy Dunn will report to Mr. Lore and
will oversee Wal-Mart's collection of online-centric brands,
including Bonobos and hipster clothing website ModCloth, which
Wal-Mart bought in March. The Bonobos deal is expected to close
within the next couple months.
Bonobos is the latest online retail startup to be acquired as a
boom in venture-capital funding for retail subsides. Funding for
retail startups surged in 2015, when venture capitalists invested a
record-setting $1.8 billion in retailers, according to industry
tracker Dow Jones VentureSource. Funding for the sector dropped
more than 60% in 2016.
Bonobos, which started as an online-only retailer in 2007,
produces its own clothing line designed to appeal to
fashion-forward men. It opened its first brick-and-mortar store in
2011 and now operates more than two dozen "guideshops," which allow
shoppers to try on clothes and place orders for delivery by mail,
rather than buying on site.
Write to Imani Moise at imani.moise@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
June 16, 2017 10:09 ET (14:09 GMT)
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