How L.L. Bean Started One of the Most Successful Mail Order Companies in the World

If there are Americans who still don't know the name of their congressman and think New Mexico is part of some other country, there are probably at least a few who've never heard of L.L. Bean. But there can't be many. Bean sent out almost 100 million catalogs last year - only a few million short of one for every U.S. household.

In 1911, however, nobody had ever heard of Leron Lanwood (or "Leonwood," as he eventually began spelling it) Bean - except his neighbors in Freeport, Maine, where he ran a branch of his brother's shoe store, except when he was away on one of his hunting trips. (In his autobiography, he allowed that, at the time, "I was much more interested in hunting than in running the store.'') It was in 1911 that Bean decided he'd had it with the high-topped leather shoes he was wearing to hunt in. The blasted things made duck hunting almost as painful for him as it was for the ducks. Water soaked through them, so he slogged around all day with cold, wet feet. Drying them by the fire overnight made them stiff and twisted, so they rubbed in all the wrong places.

Bean thought he could do better. He took a pair of rubbers off the shelf at the store, and got a local cobbler to cut out a pair of leather shoe tops and stitch them on. They worked so well, he commissioned the cobbler , to make up another 100 pairs, and sent out circulars advertising them to all holders of Maine hunting licenses.

This was a coup: Because only out of- staters were then required to buy hunting licenses, Bean's ad went to upper-crust hunters from Boston, New York and Philadelphia. They bought all hundred pairs, at $3.50 per, delivered free anywhere in the United States - but, alas, 90 pairs came back to Bean because, at the first tug, the stitching had pulled right through the rubber. Undaunted, Bean went to U.S. Rubber in Boston for beefier bottoms. He replaced all the failed shoes from his first batch, and started selling more, and more. Thus was his mail order empire founded on 90 pairs of defective shoes and a commitment to satisfy his customers.

Today, Bean's Maine hunting shoe comes in some 55 different variations - different colors, different heights, laced or slip-on, lined in fleece or Goretex or Thinsulate or felt - from $41 to $125. The only duck hunter I know says his are "the most comfortable boots I've ever worn." But even people who don't know a duck from a goose find uses - ranging from shoveling snow to delivering mail-for Bean's duck boots.

Kilt Andrew, Bean's PR director, remembers that the first pair he ever saw adorned the feet of his great Aunt Marian, who arrived early to collect him from fourth grade and take him to dancing class one snowy day in Portland, resplendent in a high-laced pair of "these incredible, outre boots," to the vast amusement of his classmates.

No doubt, Andrew's Yankee Aunt Marian would be pleased to hear that Bean-swimming against the tide of a throwaway society - still rebuilds its Maine hunting shoes when the bottoms wear out. In fact, this bottom- replacement operation led to what's probably the most popular version of the shoe, the low-cut moccasin or gumshoe.

Source: L.L. Bean: The Making of an American Icon by Leon Gorman (Hardcover - Oct 3, 2006)