lOMoARcPSD|22517024
BUSI 520 - MMIP Part 2
International Business (Liberty
University)
lOMoARcPSD|22517024
L.L. Bean, Inc. is a leading U.S. catalog company and the largest catalog supplier of outdoor
gear in the world. The L.L. Bean catalogs, a tradition since the company's founding, are the
engine that drives company sales; in 1999 the company took in $854 million from catalog sales
alone. The 1999 catalogs, 70 in all, offered approximately 16,000 different items, most tied to
the pursuit of outdoor, active lifestyles. For the solitary fisherman or the busy baby-boomer, the
name L.L. Bean stands for quality, value, and enduring style--so much so that each year more
than three million visitors make pilgrimages to the company's original retail store, in Freeport,
Maine, to soak up the Bean ambiance and the Bean bargains. Retail sales for 1999 (including
those for the L.L. Kids Store, adjacent to the flagship store; a second L.L. Bean Store in
McLean, Virginia; ten factory outlet stores; and more than 20 independently owned retail stores
in Japan) reached $206 million. The llbean.com e-commerce web site has been operational since
1996.
L.L. Bean also enjoys a high reputation, among its corporate peers as well as its customers, for
order fulfillment.
The founder of the company was a 40-year-old Maine outdoorsman named Leon Leonwood
Bean. Orphaned at age 12, Bean began to develop his entrepreneurial skills by doing odd jobs
and by selling soap door-to-door. He also earned money by trapping. 'Although he was a natural
salesman,' according to Robert B. Pile in Top Entrepreneurs and Their Businesses, 'he was never
really satisfied in one job and drifted about from place to place.' Finally, Bean went to work for
his older brother, Otho, in a Freeport dry goods store. There Bean sold overalls to manual
laborers and earned $12 a week. His true love, however, was hunting and fishing in the Maine
woods and streams, a love that would eventually lead to the development of one of the most
popular and enduring products in American retailing.
Like most outdoorsmen in the early 1900s, Bean frequently suffered the problem of hiking with
waterlogged boots. In 1912 he decided to add leather tops to a pair of ordinary rubber boots. He
sought the services of a local shoemaker, and, after a few pairs of the boots had been sewn
together, he penned a circular entitled 'The Maine Hunting Shoe.' A model of early direct-mail
advertising, the circular began: 'Outside of your gun, nothing is so important to your outfit as
your foot-wear. You cannot expect success hunting deer or moose if your feet are not properly
dressed.' Bean mailed the letter to sportsmen from outside Maine who had purchased Maine
hunting licenses and touted his original shoe as 'light as a moccasin, with the protection of a
heavy hunting boot.' He priced his product at $3.50 per pair and, to further entice his fellow
hunters, offered a money-back guarantee.
