Andy Dunn (born February 20, 1979) is an American

entrepreneur Entrepreneurship is the creation or extraction of economic value in ways that generally entail beyond the minimal amount of risk (assumed by a traditional business), and potentially involving values besides simply economic ones. An entreprene ...

and the co-founder of

Bonobos The bonobo (; ''Pan paniscus''), also historically called the pygmy chimpanzee (less often the dwarf chimpanzee or gracile chimpanzee), is an endangered great ape and one of the two species making up the genus ''Pan (genus), Pan'' (the other bei ...

Inc. Dunn was CEO for eleven years after co-founding Bonobos in 2007. In June 2017,

Walmart Walmart Inc. (; formerly Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.) is an American multinational retail corporation that operates a chain of hypermarkets (also called supercenters), discount department stores, and grocery stores in the United States and 23 other ...

announced it was purchasing Bonobos for $310 million in cash. Dunn joined Walmart after the purchase to lead the company's collection of

direct-to-consumer Direct-to-consumer (DTC or D2C) or business-to-consumer (B2C) is the business model of selling products directly to customers and thereby bypassing any third-party retailers, wholesalers, or middlemen. Direct-to-consumer sales are usually transa ...

brands.

Career

Early years

Dunn was a consultant for

Bain & Company Bain & Company is an American management consulting company headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts. The firm provides advice to public, private, and nonprofit organizations. One of the Big Three (management consultancies), Big Three management co ...

in the US and Latin America following college. His time at Bain included consulting for catalog-based retailer Lands’ End, which was inspiration for the direct-to-consumer business and customer service model of Bonobos.

Bonobos

Started by

Stanford Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University, is a private research university in Stanford, California, United States. It was founded in 1885 by railroad magnate Leland Stanford (the eighth governor of and th ...

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. The company launched with pants that eliminate "Khaki Diaper Butt” and now offers a full line of menswear, including shirts and suits. Bonobos pioneered the internet-driven direct to consumer (DTC), or digitally native vertical brand (DNVB), retail model. 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 New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs, each coextensive w ...

, of DTC brands, including

Warby Parker Warby Parker Inc. is an American eyewear brand and retailer of prescription glasses, contact lenses, and sunglasses, based in New York City. Founded in 2010, it was initially an online-only retailer. It now receives (about two-thirds) of its r ...

, Harry's, Glossier,

Allbirds Allbirds is an American public benefit company originating in New Zealand that sells footwear and apparel, co-founded in 2015 by Tim Brown and Joey Zwillinger. The company is headquartered in San Francisco, and is known for their minimalist ...

, 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 Manhattan ( ) is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the Boroughs of New York City, five boroughs of New York City. Coextensive with New York County, Manhattan is the County statistics of the United States#Smallest, larg ...

headquarters of the company. The Ninjas became a key part of the Bonobos experience in serving customers.

Guideshops

In 2011, the company invented a new retail model: apparel stores as fit-to-ship showrooms.

Red Swan

In 2011 Dunn cofounded the angel investment firm, Red Swan, which is focused on investing in consumer retail and consumer internet companies.

Personal life

Dunn grew up in

Chicago Chicago is the List of municipalities in Illinois, most populous city in the U.S. state of Illinois and in the Midwestern United States. With a population of 2,746,388, as of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, it is the List of Unite ...

alongside his sister, Monica Royer, founder of Monica + Andy. His mom, Usha Ahuja Dunn, is an immigrant from

India India, officially the Republic of India, is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, seventh-largest country by area; the List of countries by population (United Nations), most populous country since ...

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. In 2017, Dunn married Manuela Zoninsein, a Brazilian immigrant and sustainability entrepreneur. Dunn and Zoninsein live in

. In 2022, Dunn went public with his battle with

bipolar disorder Bipolar disorder (BD), previously known as manic depression, is a mental disorder characterized by periods of Depression (mood), depression and periods of abnormally elevated Mood (psychology), mood that each last from days to weeks, and in ...

, 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 Bellevue Hospital (officially NYC Health + Hospitals/Bellevue and formerly known as Bellevue Hospital Center) is a hospital in New York City and the oldest public hospital in the United States. One of the largest hospitals in the United States ...

in 2016, after which he was arrested for "stripping naked in the throes of mania and assaulting his then girlfriend and elderly mother-in-law". In
Ted talk
in 2023 he discussed it further.

Awards and recognition

* Crain's New York Business 40 under 40 list in 2013. *Forbes's 40 under 40 in 2018. *Mover and Shaker of New York's startup scene, Entrepreneur magazine, 2013. *Sexiest CEOs Alive, Business Insider. *100 People Transforming the World of Business, Business Insider.

References

External links

Bonobos: Andy Dunn
-

How I Built This ''How I Built This'' is an American podcast about "innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists, and the stories behind the movements they built" produced by NPR. History ''How I Built This'' began on September 12, 2016, as a podcast where the host, ...

, NPR radio, 21 January 2019. Accessed 16 February 2020. {{DEFAULTSORT:Dunn, Andy 1979 births Living people Northwestern University alumni Stanford Graduate School of Business alumni American retail chief executives 20th-century American Jews 21st-century American Jews People with bipolar disorder