A century later, the company still sells the original hunting boot (a 16-foot sculpture of one stands outside its flagship store in Freeport). Today, L.L.Bean also offers hundreds of other products, including apparel for men,
women, and children; footwear; and, of course, outdoor
gear for camping, fishing, hiking, and other sports. Sales
reached $1.52 billion in 2011.
L.L.Bean still produces its signature boots in the United
States. It has two manufacturing facilities in Maine that
make boots and tote bags and perform some customization
of other manufactured products. Although the retailer
sources 10 to 12 percent of its merchandise in the United
States, the rest of its goods are made in Asia and Europe.
“We try to source as close as we can [to Maine], where it
makes economic sense to do so,” says Mike Perkins, the
retailer’s vice president for fulfillment.
SALES CHANNELS EXPAND
Over the course of 100 years, L.L.Bean has diversified its
sales channels. When Leon Leonwood Bean founded the
company in 1912, he sold his boot through mail solicita-tion, which evolved into a catalog operation. Five years after
starting the company, Bean opened a retail store in
Freeport, Maine, which still exists today as part of a seven-acre retail campus.
Over the last two decades, L.L.Bean has expanded its
retail presence at home and abroad. Currently, it has 33
retail and outlet stores in the United States, located in the
Northeast as well as in the Chicago area. The company
opened its first international retail store in Tokyo in 1992
and now operates dozens of stores in Japan and China. In
addition, L.L.Bean sells online worldwide and mails its catalogs to customers in more than 160 countries.
Several years ago, the company separated its retail store
and direct-to-customer fulfillment operations. Since then,
L.L.Bean has operated two distribution centers (DCs), both
in Freeport—one for retail, the other for catalog and online
sales. “We wanted retail to own their inventory to do a bet-
ter job of forecasting and sourcing product to the stores,”
says Perkins. “That’s why we went down the road of two dis-
tinct inventory pools.”
Shipping is also handled differently for each channel.
Although customers who place orders online or through a
catalog can select their preferred delivery method, about 90
percent of all direct-sales merchandise is shipped from
Freeport by UPS, Perkins says. As for the retail outlets,
L.L.Bean operates its own private fleet to supply its stores in
Maine, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire. It uses a vari-
ety of less-than-truckload carriers to serve stores in other
parts of the country.
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