Fans Of Bonobos Were Aghast When Walmart Bought The Brand. But They’re Still Shopping

When Walmart and its subsidiary, Jet.com, unexpectedly bought the popular fashion brands ModCloth and Bonobos just a few months apart last year, the brands’ passionately devoted fans collectively gasped. Their beloved, quirky online shops—whose carefully cultivated aesthetics were more cool boutique than big-box store—had been gobbled up by a middle-American discount department-store chain with a reputation for exploitative labor practices. It seemed a backlash was inevitable, as people vowed to shop elsewhere. “I shed a little tear when I deleted the app,” one woman told the Los Angeles Times after the ModCloth news broke in March. On Facebook, Bonobos’s customers trolled the brand mercilessly after the deal was announced in June. A year later though, both brands are going strong. Any backlash that did materialize appears to be outweighed by customers—both new and returning—buying up even more of ModCloth’s colorful dresses and Bonobos’s shapely pants, at least according to the brands themselves. Read more at Quartz.