Bonobos Raises $18.5 Million. Metrosexuals Unite!

Andy Dunn is part Indian and part European. He's tall and slender, but he has surprisingly meaty thighs. As a result, he could never find pants that fit well. European cut pants were too tight but when he tried to wear American cut pants he felt like he was swimming in billowing fabric. And if he spent all day shopping to find great pants, he didn't feel great afterwards. "If I spent a Saturday shopping, I felt like I misspent my time as a man," he says. So while at Stanford Business School he and a few friends started Bonobos- a company that makes pants that fit. The theory was that there'd been huge strides with fit in premium denim but not regular pants. Dunn added to the fit some crazy colors, high end fabrics, and hip details in the buttons and zippers. He started getting them made in San Francisco's small garment district near the ballpark, while a lot of his peers were starting Facebook and iPhone apps. In his first year he sold hundreds of thousands of dollars in pants, mostly to classmates out of the trunk of his car. There was another sign of success: Girls in bars starting grabbing his butt for the first time. As a single guy in his early 20s, that was an important data point.