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Subscription Men’s Clothing Startup Bombfell Raises $730,000 Seed Round
- jonschwartz 14y agoI was part of the beta trial and I consider the Bombfell team my friends (even if we've never actually met). This service has changed the way I dress. To address what @jawns was saying, I was one of those who didn't care about brands and also made questionable fashion decisions. If you're willing to give Bombfell a try, they will change your mind about quality brands. They make you look good and will work with you till you're happy with your selection. These guys are awesome and I wish them 1000% success!
- JimEngland 14y agoI've been using Bombfell since the summer and absolutely love it. If you have any questions on how it works, I'll try my best to answer them.
- michaelt 14y ago1. If there's three people in my office all with subscriptions, do we all show up in identical shirts on delivery day? 2. My online clothes purchases have sometimes had poor fit. How good have you found it? 3. How much input do you get into what you actually receive? Let's say I have enough jeans already - can I opt out of getting more jeans?
- dbarlett 14y ago2. Very good. They ask for a decent set of measurements, collect feedback on every item, and remember comments like "I have big calves from running". 3. Yes. You also get an email before each shipment and can cancel (like Amazon Subscribe & Save).
- bernieyoo 14y ago1. We keep track of friends via the personalized invite codes to prevent just that. Even if you don't use those codes, every item is picked for your body shape, skin tone etc. so odds of that happening are low. 2. Already answered :) 3. You can also set preferences in your dashboard to NEVER receive categories (eg you can turn "jeans" off).
- JimEngland 14y ago1. Four of my friends have subscriptions, the only items we have all received were a pair of dark jeans. 2. The fit has been excellent for me. I am a slim build between small and medium so I get shirts in both sizes. They know their brands and how they run. 3. They have a settings page with on/off switches that let you opt in or out of all clothing items. You can even send the stylists pictures of clothing you already have and ask them to find something that matches.
- koomerang 14y agoWhen you folks hitting the UK? You guys rock!
- bernieyoo 14y agoUndetermined - int'l shipping logistics are a Gordian Knot!
- bswinnerton 14y agoAll around pretty awesome service. Good for them.
- jawns 14y agoHere's what I don't understand about this business model. On the one hand, you're targeting guys who feel like they don't know enough about fashion to be able to make good clothing choices themselves -- so they trust an unknown stylist with unknown credentials to make the choice for them. On the other hand, you're targeting guys who value premium, name-brand clothes. I would think that if you're in category one, you wouldn't know enough to have strong brand preferences, and if you're in category two, you know enough that putting everything in the hands of a stylist would be uncomfortable for you.
- bernieyoo 14y agoHey I'm one of the founders. I don't think that trusting brands is mutually exclusive with customers who aren't extremely knowledgeable - if anything, that's the reason brands exist: as a signal for customers who don't have much of their own "information" to rely on. Many of our customers actually really enjoy discovering new brands that they wouldn't have found on their own, vs. sticking to the tried and true. And for guys who already know and value specific name-brand clothes, there's actually another benefit which a lot of guys probably identify with: the ability to get more clothes from that brand's most recent collection without having to go get it yourself.
- dbarlett 14y agoThere's a third category: guys who like mid-level clothing but don't have time to test the fit of different brands. I gave Bombfell my measurements (not bizarre but outside of what you find at Macy's) and they've sent two shirts and two pairs of pants. The first pair of pants didn't fit, but they took my feedback and sent a much better-fitting pair for no extra cost. I could "defect" and buy the same brands elsewhere, but it would cost more than $69.
- michaelt 14y agoGiven the choice to sell brand name goods at brand name prices, vs selling off brand goods at off brand prices, there's a lot more profit in premium brand products. Of course it would be even more profitable if you could sell off brand goods at premium brand prices - but would such an offering attract enough customers to make much money?
- adcoelho 14y agoI really hate it when I see an awesome service that I would like to try and then realize that it only works in the US.
- bernieyoo 14y agoSorry for the delay - international shipping is NOT pretty. Particularly when you want to enable cost-effective, painless returns.
- adcoelho 14y agoI totally understand the difficulties involved, it would be impossible to start working worldwide from the very beginning. As with everything else I will have to wait for it to come to Europe. The problem is both the waiting time and the number of companies for which it isn't worth it to explore markets outside the US.
- bernieyoo 14y agoWith e-comm, the issue with Europe (from the prelim investigations we've done) is the lack of centralized shipping service. Whereas in US you can use one system to cost-effectively reach any of 300 million people, for Europe you're dealing with lot of local fiefdoms, OR you're paying significantly higher rates for UPS/Fedex. Not to mention return logistics!
- bhouser 14y agoWhen you're ready to come to Europe, just start with Germany. DHL is very fast, even with standard shipping (compared to my experiences with shipping in Canada). Most shipments are delivered in one or two days. And 80 million people is a decent market.
- bernieyoo 14y agoThanks for the tip!
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- crucio 14y agoWhat's the reasoning behind not offering other bits of clothing like socks and boxers? Also, do you get huge shipments of the exact same garments, or do you try to keep the offerings unique so friends don't end up getting the same clothes each month?
- bernieyoo 14y agoThat's on the roadmap. We didn't start out with that because you run into the Kozmo.com problem (lots of human-powered service for a few bucks). We still have to make enough margin to clothe and feed the stylists making your picks :) No it's not one-size-fits-all, every pick is personalized literally to you. We also keep track of friends through the invite codes to prevent #twinning.
- zolihonig 14y agoI had that request to the team. I hear it's coming soon. Everyone get's something different - it's highly personalized picks, and the stylists work with through. Last month I sent back 3 pairs of pants till I finally got the one pair I loved. Shameless Invite Link: http://bombfell.com/?rc=3075PuHAG http://bombfell.com/?rc=3075PuHAG
- zolihonig 14y agoThat's awesome. Congrats guys! Been a happy bombfell customer for 7 months and absolutely LOVE it. Signup here: http://bombfell.com/?rc=3075PuHAG http://bombfell.com/?rc=3075PuHAG
- shawnc 14y agoSeems there could be a mutual benefit of cross promotion between Bombfell and Manpacks.
- bernieyoo 14y agoWe love the Manpacks team! Lots of respect for the trailblazing they did.
- MisterBastahrd 14y agoJust like most of these services, they claim big and tall sizing and then utterly fail at it. Biggest size? 2x. I haven't been able to comfortably fit into a 2x shirt since my freshman year of high school. My shoulders prohibit that, and even if they didn't, a non-tall shirt is not going to be of use to anyone over 6'3".
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- bernieyoo 14y agoHey I'm a founder. We actually just started picking up real Big & Tall sizing within past 2 months. Still gathering data on how B&T fits guys' bodies, but learning a lot.
- cdibona 14y agoAnd don't forget that the larger sizes from vendors vary widely. A Ralph Lauren (black/purple) xl, xlb, xlt, 2xlt and 2xlb fit very different torso shapes and that's just one manufacturer. Also, monthly auto-clothing deliveries implies a level of replacability for the profitable clothes that would lead me to think they'd look good for a limited amount of time and that quality fabrics and tailoring would be limited. Which then makes me think they're not targeting people with standards and taste so much as people who do not want to think about clothes and that wouldn't be something I'd want to use.
- bernieyoo 14y agoRespectfully disagree, our goal is to establish a lifetime relationship with our customers, not churn-and-burn them out within first 3 months. If we sent clothes that fell apart people would stop using us. We want users to come back to us for their wardrobe needs whenever they find they need them. That's why we built the product to be flexible, so you can schedule your next shipment when you want, or even pause indefinitely.
- oftenwrong 14y agoHow many people really need new clothing every month? It seems like subscribers would eventually have all the clothing they need (or more), and then they would no longer need the service. Is there a way to suspend the service, or slow the rate of deliveries? Maybe a way to do a one-time order instead of a subscription?
- bernieyoo 14y agoWe've intentionally made it super flexible. You can rush or delay your next shipment, choose to skip a month, ask for another pick if you don't like it. Can change frequency to every 2 or 3 months if you'd like too. Can indefinitely put account on pause.
- tocomment 14y ago$69/month is about 10x my clothing budget! Should I be embarrassed? Ashamed? Is this a sign I'm not dressing well :-( (I go out once every other year and spend 100-300 on new clothes)
- bernieyoo 14y agoDon't need to be embarrassed or ashamed. I think you'll find there's a marked quality difference at 10x cheaper, just because the economics wouldn't work out if you used higher quality materials and design and sold for 10x cheaper.
- matthuggins 14y agoYou are probably not their target demographic then. :)
- dpark 14y agoWhere do you live? I can't imagine how you're buying enough clothes to get through the week. You're spending $50-$150 per year? Prices at Target.com indicate that I'd have to spend $65 just to replace my socks ($14 for a pack of 10), underwear ($28 for 8 pair), and undershirts ($23 for a pack of 6). And realistically, I'd be looking at another $23 for more undershirts because 6 isn't enough to get through a week. So I'm more than halfway through your maximum yearly budget and don't have any pants or shirts that are actually supposed to be seen. Granted, these things might not be fully replaced every year, but these are also just basics. Also, how are you affording shoes? Even just one pair per year would eat up half of your max budget. Cheaper shoes can be found, but I find them so non-durable that it more than offsets the savings. I don't think you should be embarrassed. If you can buy all your clothes for that price and not look homeless, good for you. I just don't know how you could manage it.
- burningion 14y agoPage keeps crashing in Chrome on OSX after clicking get started. I get through about 4 steps and the page crashes the Chrome window.
- bernieyoo 14y agoAre you using any extensions? I'm using Chrome on OSX and not able to replicate that.
- jordanlev 14y agoLooks similar to TrunkClub ( http://www.trunkclub.com/ http://www.trunkclub.com/ ), which I saw on HN a couple of months ago. But with cheaper prices. (And hopefully better service -- the TrunkClub advisor I talked to missed an appointment, was confrontational, and didn't seem to listen well).
- bernieyoo 14y agoYea we definitely want to offer clothing at reasonable prices. We're bringing web technology to the traditionally offline/manual process of personal styling so that we don't have to charge exorbitantly high prices to turn a profit. More automated, less 1:1 back-and-forth, but still with fantastic customer service.
- Tyr42 14y agoI wish you guys had metric. I don't know how tall I am in feet.
- kadjar 14y agoI was way excited for this, but was a little disappointed as I went through the signup process. I'm not terribly fashion-savvy, and I don't know how to pair things. If there were an 'outfit' option where you could receive a pair of pants / shorts and a fitting top for about $150 / month, I would sign up, and many of my friends would too.
- bernieyoo 14y agoWe do send multiple items per month on user request. Just email us at bombsquad[at]bombfell[dot]com after you sign up.