An earlier story we wrote touched on the subject of integrating your own personal style into the workplace, which consequently led us to discuss the merits of viewing a career wardrobe as a personal investment.  To build on that topic, we’ve hooked up with the guys over at Bonobos, a funky pants startup in NYC to talk about, well, pants — and building a worthwhile wardrobe one piece at a time.

So in a time when pinny pinching is necessary, are Bonobos worth the $100 – $275 price tag?  In a word, yes.  And I’ll tell you why:  quality-made wardrobe pieces are a career necessity that should last you years to come — not provide a measly six to nine month lifespan.  Another big kicker?  You’re supporting local jobs at a time when many New Yorkers are losing theirs to cutbacks and companies outsourcing their labor.  So to get a better handle on what makes Bonobos such an excellent pair of pants, we spoke to their Chief of Staff, Dave Eisenberg, to find out where the company got its roots, why they’re a better buy than a pair of Old Navy slacks, and where they’re headed in the future.  We also picked up a few fashion recommendations in the process.

For our readers who aren’t familiar with Bonobos, can you tell us how Bonobos got its start? Sure.  Bonobos got its start by our two founders, Brian and Andy, who were business school students at Stanford in 2007, and the pants were created because Brian had a problem — he could never find pants that really fit well.  He knew that pants that fit well were incredibly expensive and at the highest end of the market, costing between $200 and $500 bucks a pop at some of the highest end boutiques and department stores.  And he knew that stuff that fit him and was geared towards him at some of the mainstream places like J. Crew or Banana Republic — things like that — were just cut to fit as many guys as possible, so they’d have a very boxy cut.

So he borrowed a sewing machine from a girlfriend and learned how to make a pair of pants that had a better cut and some of those attributes that he could find in those higher end pants and started to make them on campus, using really high quality fabrics and American manufacturing.  He started selling them to his friends and they started buying them, saying that they were the best pants that had ever fit [them].  And Andy, who was his roommate at the time, had a real passion for creating consumer businesses, and a lot of his experiments to date had been around that idea.  It was a perfect combination to create a new, better fitting pair of pants with a new distribution model going direct to the customer rather than through the store — and Bonobos was born.

Wow – had Brian ever created a pair of pants before? Brian’s kind of a clothes horse, you know.  He really knows what is a great value out there and what looks great.  And so while he had never had a background in fashion — he’d been an investor his whole life — he’s always been looking around for a great opportunity to find high quality products at a great price. And he just worked on it for a long time. He worked on the pattern and he worked on the experimentation until he was satisfied with his final production.

What about you?  Had you ever worked in the apparel industry before this? I have never. You know we only have one member of our team — out of fifteen — who had ever worked in fashion before. And that’s our designer, Brett, who works with Brian, and he was the senior menswear designer at Vineyard Vines before he heard about what we were up to and how he could get involved and so he joined to kind of supplement our efforts there.

But my background is in management consulting — as well as running a few startups when I was younger — and I wanted to get back in [startups] very badly. So I left my job working in strategy consulting for a large prestigious strategy consulting firm and joined a pants startup as the first employee.

Very nice.  At least you have some fresh ideas coming in. Yeah, it was a great business overview background to have — just kind of knowing a little bit about a lot of different types of problems. And being in an operating environment has allowed me to practice many of the best practices that you learn in a place like the firm I used to work at.

How is the recession affecting your business, since you guys are sort of a small boutique company? You know, the truth is, we grew 25%, month on month, in 2008 from January to December.  We had a great year. I don’t know how much better it would have been had the recession kind of not hit, and hit our customer base pretty hard in New York. That being said, I think the advantages of buying online are that you’re not paying for models, you’re not paying for retail spaces. You’re really just paying for the quality of the products and customer service — which are two areas that we try and use the best [techniques].

So for some folks, I think we may be better positioned than others in a recession environment. The flip side of that coin is we might be a lot bigger if everyone were spending a little bit more on their wardrobe, and we think we’re a great value for guys that buy their pants from us. So we hope that throughout the recession that people will continue to invest in really high quality clothes that are going to last them a long time. And our generous return policy of “Any pant, any time, for any reason” is also a really nice hedge in this type of environment.

We had a story a few months ago which actually spurred this interview, basically talking about how to avoid the monkey suit for men working in a corporate environment.  Do you have any tips for our male readers who want to jazz up their look? Yeah.  I think people often overlook the importance of a really great fitting pair of pants.  A lot of guys just kind of go with the default thing they find off the rack. Oftentimes, it’s a really baggy look: it’s really pleated, it doesn’t have any design attributes. And I think that one of the things that Bonobos offers is the chance to have a really formal piece of business casual clothing made from really high quality wool, cashmere and silk.

And yet, is interesting enough that people at work are gonna notice you as being a really great dresser. But more importantly, that has a fit that will allow you to have it be comfortable enough that you feel fine working around the office all day, but you can also transition that wardrobe piece from your work environment to your night activities — which is a really great, versatile piece of clothing I think that often gets overlooked when people think about dressing for work. They think about putting on really boring clothes and feeling lame about wearing those out and about when they leave work. But Bonobos is kind of a happy medium there.

I noticed on your Facebook page that you had some photos of everyone in the office wearing Capertons at the Christmas party.  Those are some pretty bold colors.  How do you make something like that work for the office?  Is it even possible? First off, you need an office environment that’s a little bit fun and a little friendly. I don’t think that for a lot of guys wearing monkey suits that the Capertons are a viable alternative. That being said,  some of our other corduroy offerings particularly the Samurais in navy and the Black Flags in black offer somewhat of a business casual environment. A really dark, very soft pant, when paired with a light button down or a light-colored buttondown, can make a really excellent business casual outfit.

What about New Yorkers who are notorious for wearing black and grey?  Are there any do’s and don’t's for implementing color into the mix? Yeah, you just want to be very careful about wearing colors that are too similar. You know a lot of guys think that they can get away with matching a black and a brown or a black and a navy, and those are very very tricky color combinations to navigate. You need to be kind of an expert level dresser.  It also helps to have an awesome color that looks great with your skin and then pair it with accessories that complement that color well.

So if you’re going to look at some of our black pants like the SL Savage Verde or the Destros or some of our grey pants like the Truth or the G6 or the G5 — you just want to make sure to take a look at some of the photos that we use because Brian puts a ton of thought into what shoes he wears with a lot of our stuff, and see if you’ve got anything in your closet that matches those really well. Then you can create some pretty versatile outfits based on varying up kind of the shoes and the belt — we’re a little biased, we want people to base their outfits around their pants.  But, there’s a lot you can do with black and grey and particularly when you’re not dealing with something that everyone else has kind of in a store environment and you get a unique piece, it can be really cool. Guys love to get noticed for their shoes, and we want them to start getting noticed for their pants now.

What about you?  What’s your favorite style of Bonobos pants? My favorite pair? So, it’s split in terms of my sort of casual vs formal mood. I love the Shoguns, which is now the Samurais – or the straight leg version of it, for the casual wear.  I wear it all the time.  I used to be kind of a jeans guy, and they’ve replaced my jeans entirely because they’re so much lighter weight and they’re also a lot more comfortable to wear for a few days in a row. So that’s my favorite on the casual front.  And on the dressy front, I love the Truth.  It’s my favorite pair of pants ever made. It’s a pure cashmere grey herringbone wool lined with black silk.  And you can pair it with so many different cool blazers and dress shirts.  It’s a really unique pair. They always get compliments when I wear them out.

How much do those cost, the Truth? The Truth are part of our pure cashmere line, so they are $275. They are within our range of prices — they’re on the higher end.  What I would encourage customers who are thinking about getting a really nice pair of dress pants to do, is compare them to similar products at a place like Barneys or Bergdorfs where you’d find a product running from between $500 and $900 depending on the brand you were looking at.

You know, someone just coming to the website might look at your pants and think that they’re on the expensive side.  Can you explain why spending $100 on a pair of Bonobos is better than buying a pair of $40 slacks at Old Navy? Sure. You know there are a few things. Old Navy is going to be great for a guy who needs to dress on a budget and who, to be honest, isn’t concerned about having a pair of pants that fits in a compelling and unique way. What you get  with Bonobos by coming up, compared to products that are half our price are, you get a much more quality fabric.

All of our fabrics are sourced in Europe, as opposed to Old Navy who sources their fabrics in Asia or sometimes in South America. Same thing with the construction. We’re using American labor here in New York City, and a lot of times the quality that we get from hand sewing a curved waistband is just dramatically higher when people are putting their production overseas. And lastly, you get our service. Very few places — Old Navy included — are going to allow you at any time to call up and get fashion recommendations to help you find the right size, to do personal fittings, to have our return policy where if anything happens that may not even be your fault, we can help you exchange them out for a new pair.

So, when you put all those things together, it starts to make sense to say for a little bit extra, I can get a product that I’m really gonna love as opposed to have serve a function. Which is how I think about the difference. One is that you can buy something that you really are attracted to and love and the other is that it’s just another pair of pants.

So wait — you guys will really give fashion advice? [Laughs] We will. Anybody who’s a Bonobos customer and who wants some help on pairing colors with things that they like or outfits — all you have to do is contact our customer service ninja team and we’ll be absolutely thrilled to offer our advice.

And if you look at our blog actually, Brian has written some really cool posts about how to avoid common problems like the 10 things that are really problematic when traveling — how they affect your wardrobe and how that could affect everything from your mood to your ability to perform at a high level. And I encourage readers who are interested in our fashion advice part of our business, to check out our blog.

What about customers that are located in New York — Can they come into the showroom or office? Yeah.  Definitely. Our office doubles as a showroom, and so anybody in New York who’d like to come and try stuff on in person, all they have to do is shoot us a quick email or give us a phone call and we’d love to have them come visit us and check out the whole line.

That’s sounds great. It seems like you guys make it a really personal experience. Yeah, it’s fun I think. Most of the guys that come in and shop end up enjoying it a lot more than they do anywhere else. And you know, we started the company because we didn’t really like shopping. But for those guys who prefer to have the in-person experience, we want to make it work for them.

What about expansion? Do you guys have any plans to expand to anything more than pants?  Maybe some sports jackets? Absolutely. Yes. We think we can innovate across every vertical in men’s clothing. We started with pants cause we thought that’s where the biggest problem was.  But I’d definitely have your readers keep an eye out for us innovating in the areas of polos and swim products, and later on in 2009, dress shirts as well. And hopefully in a few years, we’ll actually have everything you can find in men’s clothing elsewhere on Bonobos.com. We’d like to make all of it, and we’d like to make it all really high quality and really great fitting. Those are kind of our two principles.

And what about a women’s line? Or are you guys just totally focused on providing men’s clothing? You know, we think that men are a little more under-served in terms that are catering towards their fashion needs.  And I think it’s going to take up all of our energy for the immediate future. I can’t say what will eventually happen. But you know, a bunch of women have gone for our smallest size of Bonobos — a size 28– and some of them look pretty good in it.  Some of the stuff has a little bit of a crossover ability.

And we will have some t-shirts as well. Pretty soon we’ll have designed a line for women to help us spread the word about helping guys look better in their pants — getting rid of Khaki Diaper Butt.

That’s great. Are the t-shirts going to have the Bonobos logo on it or they going to have a specific design? Um, To be determined.  I know that some of them will definitely have the Bonobos logo, but I need to chat with our designer about what else we’re going to be coming out with on the t-shirt front.

Well, it looks like we’re at the end of the road.  Is there anything else you’d like to throw in for our readers? For guys who haven’t tried buying pants online before, we really do try and make it a hassle free arrangement. We pay for all return shipping, and we really will help you find stuff that works well for you. So, we’d appreciate folks giving it a shot. We think we can make it a better experience. That would be my last pitch.

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