Bonobos launched its new Shopify-powered website on the morning Ellen Pope walked onto the Total Retail Tech stage in Dallas last month. The men's apparel brand had spent nearly two decades helping men find pants that fit, yet someone shopping online still had to make that choice without a fitting room or an expert guide beside him. Pope, Bonobos’ senior director of e-commerce, described the migration away from a long-standing custom platform so the teams responsible for merchandising, marketing, and creative could help shoppers understand fit. Furthermore, a new platform was necessary to allow team members to test new ideas without asking a technology partner to make every change. While Bonobos' site went live on Shopify that morning, the company's broader work was just beginning.
Teach Fit Where Customers Make Decisions
Bonobos began in 2007 with a better-fitting pant. The brand's assortment has grown far beyond that first product, but Pope said its purpose hasn't changed.
“We want every guy to feel the confidence that comes with wearing great fitting clothing,” said Pope.
Inside a Bonobos Guideshop, an expert guide can explain the fit system, help someone try on different options, and save what they learn to the customer’s profile. Those fit preferences are available for a later visit, online or in-store. The website has a harder task for someone starting their shopping journey on that channel: the customer needs enough information to choose before trying anything on. Bonobos approached the move to Shopify as a chance to make that education part of the shopping journey, not an explanation the customer has to seek out afterward.
The new Bonobos website experience gives that continuity a name: My Fit. Guides can manage a customer’s sizing preferences in real time, and their profile is designed to sync across Bonobos.com and selling systems so recommendations can reflect the fit the customer has already found.
Pope asked her team to think about the timing and form of each piece of information. “How do we serve the right information to the customer at the right time in the right media form to make this as easy as possible?”
Working with third-party partners, Bonobos developed product and fit content that its digital and e-commerce teams could place across the site, change, and test for different customers. That control let the team add a new fit explanation, campaign asset, and personalization test without a separate technology project for every change.
Make a Product’s Choices Easier to Navigate
Before the conversation at Total Retail Tech, the audience watched a clip from The Weekday Warrior Show, Bonobos’ new marketing campaign starring actor Jack Quaid. The Weekday Warrior dress pant gave Pope a concrete example of what Bonobos' site needed to solve. A shopper already has four types of choice on its product page: color, waist, length, and fit. Depending on the assortment, Pope said that one page might show 30 colors, 10 waist sizes, six lengths, and five fits. Those are useful options, but the shopper needs a clear path through them.
The decision became more interesting when Bonobos introduced a wool version of the pant, which raised new questions. Should fabrication become a fifth choice on the original page or should the wool pant have its own page with a clear route between related products? Either way, the team needed to organize product information so a shopper could compare what mattered without losing the fit they had come to find.
The store rollout carries that product choice into checkout. As Shopify POS reaches Bonobos’ Guideshops, Browse-on-Web Checkout is designed to let a guide build a complete look during a consultation and bring it into store checkout without rebuilding the cart.
The creative team faced a similar challenge beyond the product selector. Campaign videos, social content, and product footage could help explain how clothes look and move, but the old site limited where that material could appear. Bonobos wanted more of it throughout the customer journey, with opportunities to shop and interact rather than only view static images.
“We needed more of our content to be shoppable and interactive vs just static imagery,” Pope noted.
The campaign introduces the Weekday Warrior pant; Bonobos’ product pages then have to help a shopper choose the right fit, fabric, size, and color. The creative and e-commerce teams wanted to control where each part of that story appeared and test what helped customers decide.
Give the Teams Closest to the Customer Room to Act
Bonobos’ custom e-commerce platform had supported the business for years, but Pope said it limited where creative content could appear and how merchandisers could organize choices. With Shopify, the digital and e-commerce teams can decide where product information belongs, how related items are presented, and what to test next, while partners handle the deeper integration work.
That ownership took preparation across Bonobos. E-commerce, merchandising, marketing, creative, and store teams all had a stake in the migration. Pope said early representation helped the team get the scope right and stay on time and on cost. She also credited strong project managers and external partners for carrying a complicated launch across the business. Her advice to retailers facing a similar move was direct: "Figure out who needs to be in the room and involve them immediately.”
The new experience also includes a check-in engine designed to attribute purchases made within seven days of a Guideshop visit, online or in person, to the original store and guide. The measure gives Bonobos a way to see more of the work its guides do after a shopper leaves the store. On Bonobos.com, Shop Pay adds a one-tap checkout option.
The direct-to-consumer website was the first part to go live. Shopify POS and new clienteling tools are rolling out across Bonobos’ 48 Guideshops, while Shop app availability and additional partner capabilities follow. Pope wants that stack to keep developing with customers’ needs rather than treating the website launch as the finish.
Bonobos’ site launch gives its teams more control over how they explain fit online. The next work is to use that control alongside its guides’ in-person expertise, enabling shoppers to choose a pair of pants with confidence wherever their journey starts.
“Launching the site was one piece of this," said Pope. "Now we need to continue to maximize it."
Watch the full conversation with Pope from Total Retail Tech 2026 at the top of this page.
