Over the past six months, Walmart has been constantly under the limelight due to the flood of acquisitions. Under CEO Marc Lore, the retail giant has acquired three companies — Modcloth, Moose Jaw, and ShoeBuy; all of which define Walmart’s inclined interest towards apparel and lifestyle products. Moving ahead with the same enthusiasm, the company is soon to acquire a NY-based men’s apparel company Bonobos.
According to Recode’s report, world’s largest brick and mortar store, Walmart is in advanced acquisition talks with Bonobos. Also, it is further being said that the transaction is a done deal as both parties have agreed to a mutual price, though it hasn’t disclosed yet. The retail chain giant is expected to announce the acquisition as soon as the deal reaches its final due diligence stages.
Sources say that the purchase price will hit more than $ 70 million, considering Bonobos’ annual revenues of $100-150 million and valuation of $300 million, when it raised fresh funds back in 2014. A successful retail business like Bonobos’ will likely fetch them a deal worth one to two times its revenue.
Founded by Stanford Business School housemates Andy Dunn and Brian Spaly, Bonobos was launched as an e-commerce driven men’s clothing platform in 2007. It announced a $30 million fundraising round in 2013, with Glynn Capital and Mousse Partners joining existing investors Accel Partners, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Forerunner Ventures, and Nordstrom. Their total funding has now reached nearly $73 million.
Currently, Bonobos’ is known to cater to an extensively large male audience offering products such as pants along with casual and dress shirts, suits and blazers, tees, knits, polos, outerwear, shorts, swim, ties, belts and even pocket squares (huh!). The acquisition of Bonobos would denote a fourth such acquisition for Walmart in past seven odd months.
The company who is aggressively pushing efforts to outperform U.S-based arch nemesis Amazon looks forward to catching up soon with these acquisitions. To further outdo Amazon in foreign lands, such as India, Walmart Stores is exploring an equity partnership with homegrown e-commerce firm Flipkart (not confirmed). Since both the giants have one common rival in the form of the biggest online retailers globally — Amazon, thus, this could be a possibility in the future.
