Andy Dunn (born February 20, 1979) is an American
entrepreneur and the co-founder of
Bonobos Inc.[1] Dunn served as CEO for eleven years after co-founding the Bonobos brand in 2007.[2] In June 2017,
Walmart announced it was purchasing the Bonobos brand for $310 million in cash.[3][4] Dunn joined Walmart after the purchase to lead the company's collection of
direct-to-consumer brands.[5]
Career
Early years
Dunn was a consultant for
Bain & Company in the US and Latin America following college. His time at Bain included consulting for catalog-based retailer
Lands’ End, which served as inspiration for the direct-to-consumer business and customer service model of Bonobos.[6] A
Bonobos
Started by
Stanford graduate students Andy Dunn and Brian Spaly, Bonobos was created with the goal to provide men with better-fitting men's pants and a better shopping experience by building the brand on the internet.[7] The company launched with pants that eliminate "Khaki Diaper Butt”[8] and now offers a full line of menswear,[9] including shirts and suits.[10] Bonobos pioneered the internet-driven direct to consumer (DTC),[11] or digitally native vertical brand (DNVB), retail model.[12][13] The company launched online and was exclusive online for the first few years. It was the first American brand to use the web as the primary means of story-telling, service, commerce and distribution. The innovation led to the birth of an ecosystem, largely based in
New York City, of DTC brands, including
Warby Parker, Harry's, Glossier,
Allbirds, and Away. Core to the idea of DTC brands is bundling product and service together to drive a higher
NPS customer experience than legacy brick-and-mortar driven competition can deliver. To deliver the experience, Bonobos created a customer service team in 2008, the Ninjas, located at the
Manhattan headquarters of the company. The Ninjas became a key part of the Bonobos experience in serving customers.[14]
Guideshops
In 2011, the company invented a new retail model: apparel stores as fit-to-ship showrooms.[15]
Red Swan
In 2011 Dunn cofounded the angel investment firm, Red Swan,[16] which is focused on investing in consumer retail and consumer internet companies.[17]
Personal life
Dunn grew up in
Chicago[18] alongside his sister, Monica Royer, founder of Monica + Andy.[19][20] His mom, Usha Ahuja Dunn, is an immigrant from
India and his father, Charles Dunn, is the author of The Nurse and the Navigator, a World War II memoir of the wartime romance of his parents.[21]
In 2017, Dunn married Manuela Zoninsein, a Brazilian immigrant and sustainability entrepreneur. Dunn and Zoninsein live in
Chicago.[22]
In 2022, Dunn went public with his battle with
bipolar disorder, describing it in his autobiography Burn Rate and in public talks, discussing how he was diagnosed with it in college after a manic episode, and how he hid it during his startup years, despite incidents including hospitalization at
Bellevue Hospital in 2016,[23] after which he was arrested for "stripping naked in the throes of mania and assaulting his then girlfriend and elderly mother-in-law"[24] In a
Ted talk in 2023 he discussed it further.
Awards and recognition
Crain’s New York Business 40 under 40 list in 2013.[25]