Walmart acquisition of Bonobos is the latest win in fight with Amazon for premium customers
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Nearly lost in Friday’s bombshell Amazon-Acquires-Whole Foods news was Walmart’s acquisition of Bonobos for $310 million. This move—along with its acquisition of Modcloth in March—intensifies the ongoing battle between the giants of offline and online retail. But Walmart has a lot more shopping to do if it aspires to catch up with Amazon, which commands a healthy 17.5 percent of all online apparel sales.
Bonobos and Modcloth deliver growth in revenue and prestige to Walmart
The good news for Walmart is both they and Bonobos have been steadily growing their online apparel business over the last three years. And while Amazon’s apparel numbers are comfortably ahead of Walmart’s, Walmart is moving in the right direction.
“The acquisition of Bonobos adds significant scale to Walmart’s online apparel business,” said Ken Cassar, principal analyst, Slice Intelligence. “Bonobos’ online sales over the past 12 months were 155 percent higher than Walmart.com’s, and the Bonobos acquisition gives Walmart a bigger presence with an additional fashionable brand.”
This fashion-forward strategy will likely bring a more desirable demographic to Walmart, which has struggled to attract younger shoppers. ModCloth and Bonobos reap at least half of their online apparel sales from millennials (57 percent and 50 percent, respectively), while Walmart sees only 34 percent of sales from this group—behind Amazon.
“Walmart’s acquisition of Modcloth definitely improved their standing in the online apparel business,” observed Cassar.
Bonobos gives Walmart a leg up on Amazon’s private label apparel brands
It’s no secret that Amazon is king in e-commerce, but Walmart is doing everything it can to take some of the kingdom, particularly in online apparel sales. Walmart, however, is holding its own quite well against the e-commerce behemoth in the apparel category—particularly in baby clothes and jeans.
In fact, the only categories Amazon holds a commanding lead in are jackets & coats and dresses, which are particularly vulnerable given Modcloth and Bonobos’ strengths.
About this data
With a panel of over 5 million online shoppers, Slice Intelligence gives the most detailed, and accurate digital commerce data available, and is reported daily.
Slice Intelligence is the only service to measure digital commerce directly from the consumer, across all retailers, at the item level, and over time. Our retailer-independent methodology precisely measures commerce as it happens. By extracting detailed information from hundreds of millions of aggregated and anonymized e-receipts, Slice can map the entire Purchase Graph, connecting each and every consumer to all their purchases.
Slice gets its data from e-receipts – not a browser, app or software installed by the end-user – so its measurement reflects comprehensive shopping behavior across multiple devices, over time which are key in an increasingly omnichannel retail world.