L.L.Bean is an American, privately held retail company founded in 1912 by Leon Leonwood Bean. The company is headquartered where it was founded, in Freeport, Maine. It specializes in clothing and outdoor recreation equipment.
L.L.Bean was founded in 1912 by its namesake, hunter and fisherman Leon Leonwood Bean in Freeport, Maine. The company began as a one-room operation selling a single product, the Maine Hunting Shoe. Bean had developed a waterproof boot, which is a combination of lightweight leather uppers and rubber bottoms, that he sold to hunters. He obtained a list of nonresident Maine hunting license holders, prepared a descriptive mail order circular, set up a shop in his brother’s basement in Freeport and started a nationwide mail-order business. By 1912, he was selling the Bean Boot, or Maine Hunting Shoe, through a four-page mail-order catalog, and the boot remains a staple of the company’s outdoor image. Defects in the initial design led to 90 percent of the original production run being returned: Bean honored his money-back guarantee, corrected the design, and continued selling them.
The 220,000 sq ft L.L.Bean retail store campus in Freeport, Maine is open 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.
Leon L. Bean died on February 5, 1967, in Pompano Beach, Florida. He is buried in Freeport’s Webster Cemetery. The company passed into the directorship of Bean’s grandson, Leon Gorman, from that time until 2001, when Gorman decided to take the position of Chairman, leaving the position of CEO to Christopher McCormick, the first non-family member to assume the title. On May 19, 2013 Shawn Gorman, 47, a great-grandson of the company’s founder, was elected L.L.Bean’s chairman. The company announced a US$125,000 donation to a new scholarship fund upon Leon Gorman’s death in 2015, representing about 2.5 years of tuition at his alma mater, Bowdoin College.
Stephen Smith was named CEO in November 2015, the first time in the company’s 103-year history that a CEO had been hired from outside the company.
How successful has L. L. Bean been? L. L. Bean has been emerging as the market leader in mail-order companies that are specializing in outdoor apparel and equipments. As recorded by the company’s Customer Awareness Survey, it is the most well-known mail-order company setting the pace in the market with the reputation of having efficient […]
Then, we analyze the historical forecast errors (named MAP ratios) and the frequency distribution of these errors for ACH Individual Item by using the historical demand and forecast data. Once the historical forecast errors is determined, we define future forecast errors by using frequency distribution of past forecast errors as probability distribution. Finally we find […]
While there are several things that go into the decision of how many units to stock I will cover one. One major thing is the hard cut-off date of May 1st to “freeze the forecast”. The preliminary forecast is started in December based on past data. The commitments to vendors are based on these forecasts. […]
Bean had a gestation period of about 9 months. Its creation included merchandising, design, product, and inventory specialists. The first step of its creation process is initial conceptualization followed by the preliminary forecasts of total sales. Then forecasts were developed by book. After the layout and pagination of the books, initial commitments to vendors were […]
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