Bean, Leon Leonwood

BEAN, LEON LEONWOOD

Tired of returning from hunting trips with cold, wet feet, Leon Leonwood ("L.L.") Bean (1872–1967) designed a new type of boot that combined lightweight leather tops with waterproof bottoms. In 1912, the success of his practical footwear launched a company with annual sales that reached more than $1 billion by the end of the twentieth century.

Bean was born and brought up in rural Maine. Since his parents died when he was twelve, he and his brothers and sister lived with relatives in various remote "Down East" (Maine) villages. Early in life Bean developed a passion for hunting, fishing, and roaming the outdoors. He worked at odd jobs to support himself, his wife, and three children.

In 1911, at age 39, Bean invented what he claimed were the first modern lightweight, warm, and dry boots. He called his boots the "Maine Hunting Shoe," and in 1912, while helping his brother run a small dry goods store in Freeport, Maine, he decided to sell the handmade footwear by mail order. His first step was to obtain a copy of the publicly available list of persons holding Maine hunting licenses—the natural market for his boots. Bean sent each of the licensed hunters his first mail order catalog, a three-page brochure, extolling the virtues of his new boots and guaranteeing 100 percent satisfaction.

He had to make good on that guarantee almost immediately. Ninety of the first 100 boots sprung leaks when the stitching holding the leather tops pulled out of the soft rubber bottoms. Without hesitation Bean refunded the purchase price of the boots to his disgruntled, but impressed, customers. He borrowed additional capital, improved the boot's design, and began to manufacture the improved footwear on a much greater scale. The Maine Hunting Shoe soon became a necessity for anyone seeking to hunt or fish in the Northeast wilderness.

By 1917 Bean's business had outgrown his brother's dry goods shop and Bean moved to a showroom across the street where customers could drop by to purchase his products in person. By 1925, with hand knit stockings and other associated items (such as shoelaces) added to his product line, Bean employed 25 people in his operation, and yearly sales had reached $135,000. Customers were attracted by the practical nature of L.L. Bean products and by the quirky, folksy tone of the catalogs Bean wrote himself. Most attractive, however, was Bean's reputation for honesty. Customers liked the old fashioned style and character of L.L. Bean, where the boss's motto for success was: "Sell good merchandise at a reasonable profit, treat your customers like human beings, and they'll always come back for more." Bean's guarantee was unconditional. No matter how long a customer owned a product, it could always be exchanged for a replacement or a refund.

Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, L.L. Bean continued to expand its mail-order business and product line; the company was incorporated on July 1, 1934. During World War II (1939–1945), Bean served as a consultant on boot design for the U.S. Army and Navy, and his company received several contracts for military versions of hunting boots and other outdoor products. By the late 1940s, L.L. Bean had become a household word, attracting regular visits from political leaders, sports and other celebrities and had added casual apparel, gear for many outdoor sports, and additional footwear to its line.

Throughout the last years of his life, in semi-retirement in Florida, Bean held his company relentlessly to his old fashioned business practices, limiting growth, and only slowly accommodating modern technology. By 1967, when its founder died at age 94, L.L. Bean was in danger of retreating into a comfortable, but constricted, niche market.

Under Bean's grandson, Leon A. Gorman (1934–), who became president in 1967, L.L. Bean was drastically modernized. The company grew into one of the world's leading international mail order concerns, with sales of over $1 billion per year. L.L. Bean sells more than 16,000 products through catalogs, the Internet, a retail operation in Freeport, Maine, eight retail stores in Japan, and 90 factory outlet stores. The Freeport store, opened in 1951, is open 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, and remains one of Maine's most popular tourist destinations. More than 3.5 million people visit the store each year. Over 4.5 million customers place orders from all over the world; as many as 180,000 orders a day are received by phone. Despite the company's phenomenal growth in the past three decades of the century, however, it has retained its founder's strong commitment to product quality, customer satisfaction, and love of the outdoors.

See also: Leon Gorman, Mail-Order Houses

FURTHER READING

"Bean Sticks To His Backyard." Economist Magazine, August 4, 1990.

Brubach, Holly. "Mail Order America." New York Times Magazine, November 21, 1993.

Montgomery, M.R. In Search of L.L. Bean. Boston: Little, Brown, 1984.

"Obituary." New York Times. February 7, 1967.

Skow, John. "Using the Old Bean." Sports Illustrated, December 2, 1985.

The Company Behind the Catalog: The Story of L.L. Bean [cited March 4, 1999] available from the World Wide Web @ www.llbean.com/.

sell good merchandise at a reasonable profit, treat your customers like human beings, and they'll always come back for more.

l.l. bean