A SKING a guy if you can feel his pants isn’t a standard interview line. Then again, having him jut out his canary-yellow seersucker-clad butt and enthusiastically suggest, “You might want to grab the right cheek,” isn’t a standard response, either.
Brian Spaly, 31, and Andy Dunn, 29, are those kinds of guys – playful, personable and kickback. Still, behind their California-guy demeanor and longish, untamed hair lie a pair of enterprising businessmen with a full-fledged fixation: pants.
The former Stanford business school roommates are co-founders of Bonobos, a new clothing line built on the notion that men, especially young ones with athletic builds, need pants that fit better. For Spaly, it’s a preoccupation that goes back for some time – a self-proclaimed metrosexual, the Ann Arbor, Mich., native has been interested in fashion since elementary school.
“I was wearing a Bill Cosby sweater since second grade, because ‘The Cosby Show’ was hot, and I was like, ‘These sweaters are awesome,’ ” he remembers.
As he got older, pants became an issue. A triathlete and avid runner, Spaly had trouble finding stylish pants that fit his muscular thighs and trim middle.
“I’d put on Gucci pants and they’d just rip,” he says.
Mass market retailers, on the other hand, offered a one-size-fits-all kind of cut, resulting in what the guys call “khaki diaper butt” – a baggy, boxy fit that didn’t flatter men’s behinds.
By 2003, with no formal training, Spaly was buying pants in a larger size, undoing the seams and restitching them himself. The pattern he developed involved a slightly curved waistband, a thigh that’s not too loose and tapers at the knee, and a moderate flare below.
Spaly’s enthusiasm for making “pants for real guys,” as he and Dunn call them, translated into his pet project at Stanford, and he sunk part of his savings into producing pairs through a nearby manufacturer and selling them on campus.
“I watched him walk around Stanford with these two Trader Joe’s bags, selling pants, and it was like, wow, we’ve really got something here,” says Dunn.
Word of Bonobos – named after the peaceful primate, which the pair admire for its combination of promiscuity and nonviolent, “really chill” nature – spread, and soon Spaly was having trouble keeping up with demand. At that point, Dunn ditched his dreams of starting his own gourmet South African beef jerky empire (“It turns out it’s not legal in the US to sell biltong,” he says) to join his roommate.
When the pair graduated in June 2006, Spaly took Bonobos to the next level with financial backing from two professor mentors and a few early customers. In October 2007, Dunn moved the operation from their apartment kitchen to an office near Union Square, where he secured manufacturers in the Garment District and set up a Web store (bonobos.com). Spaly, meanwhile, took a full-time finance job in Chicago, but quit and joined him as of March.
The partners’ unorthodox business model calls for bypassing retailers in favor of direct selling via the Web – in part to keep costs down, but also in recognition of the fact that many men would rather endure a Jane Austen movie marathon than shop for clothes. That’s certainly true of Dunn, who admits that before getting involved with Bonobos, the only pants he owned were jeans.
Collectively, he and Spaly represent the spectrum of Bonobos’ target audience: guys who appreciate high-fashion, but would rather spend 10 minutes picking out pants online than step foot into a mall.
“Theory, Zegna, Paul Smith – those guys work toward a design couture standard,” says Spaly. “We don’t. We work toward a ‘You played football in high school, and now you’re a little overweight and you’re a mortgage broker.’ There’s a lot more of those guys that need pants than guys who are 6-foot-4, 140 and double as runway models.”
Judging by how quickly the company has grown in a mere 10 months, targeting that guy is sound business. Bonobos now has seven employees and is on target to reach $1.5 million in sales in its first year. The pair say they’ve developed something of a cult following for their line, which includes around 15 styles that rotate at any given time, ranging from work-friendly wool trousers to flashy baby-blue-and-lime-green floral stretch cotton shorts.
Dunn reads a few gushing fan e-mails: a woman whose boyfriend’s butt has been transformed by the pants, a man who swears he’ll never buy anything other than Bonobos, a federal agent stationed in Pakistan who’s thrilled the pants have enough give to tuck his pistol inside the waistband and still show off his behind.
Still, the guys are well aware that their venture, still in that tenuous first year, is perpetually skirting extinction. Sixteen-hour days are not unusual, and they often work through the weekends. Still, you’ll get few complaints from them.
“It’s hard,” says Spaly, “but I enjoy being exhausted.”
Plus, business has been good for the guys’ personal lives, too. Before he left town, Spaly was named one of Chicago’s 20 most eligible singles by Chicago magazine. And as for Dunn, inquiring journalists aren’t the only ones who’ve gotten a hands-on product demonstration.
“I now get my butt grabbed, which didn’t used to happen when it was disappearing inside my Banana Republic pants.”