Full article in the link. Crony-Capitalism and greed strikes again 
Walmart to buy Bonobos for $310M as it doubles down on fashion
Posted 1 hour ago by Ingrid Lunden (@ingridlunden)
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Walmart today doubled down on its efforts to continue building out a online retail fashion business in its bid to outpace Amazon in the wider world of commerce and specifically e-commerce. Today it announced that it would acquire menswear site Bonobos for $310 million in cash.
The deal is part of a bigger strategy at Walmart, the world’s largest physical retailer, to grow its e-commerce business, partly to offset competition from Amazon. But — perhaps in a very intentional bit of timing — almost at the same time that Walmart announced its Bonobos acquisition, Amazon announced it would be buying Whole Foods for $13.7 billion, giving it a very, very significant leg up in its budding food retail business. That underscores even more how important it is for Walmart to continue expanding into new areas.
In fashion specifically both have been making several acquisitions and launching labels to expand their customer bases.
Walmart’s Bonobos deal follows and complements several other acquisitions that the retail giant has made in the area of online fashion. They include Modcloth in March 2017, outdoor retailer Moosejaw for $51 million in February 2017, Hayneedle in March 2016, and Zappos-style shoe retailer ShoeBuy for $70 million from IAC. Many of these have been fuelled by its acquisition of Jet.com, which it purchased in 2016 for $3 billion.
Rumors had been circulating of the deal between Bonobos and Walmart for a while, and as predicted, this in part is a way to bring Andy Dunn, who had founded and was leading Bonobos, into a wider leadership role at Walmart running all of its fashion and related lifestyle operations. He will be reporting to Marc Lore, president and CEO of Walmart U.S. eCommerce (who joined with the Jet.com acquisition).
Walmart to buy Bonobos for $310M as it doubles down on fashion
