L.L. Bean, the cataloger of outdoor apparel, may be looking to make retail a greater part of its business in seeking to acquire Eddie Bauer from bankrupt Spiegel.
“It would certainly transform the look of L.L. Bean since Eddie Bauer is basically a retail operation and L.L. Bean is a catalog,” said Harry Chevan, principal of Gruppo Levey & Co, direct marketing investment bank. “But don’t think it would have a marked difference on Bean’s catalog operations.”
“I think we see two things happening here,” said Mike Petsky, CEO of investment bank Petsky Prunier. “One would be a company wanting to unload a profitable asset in order to stay afloat and the other is direct marketing companies going into retail.”
Earlier this week, the Freeport, ME company informed the U.S. Bankruptcy Court handling the Spiegel case that it wants to be kept up to date on developments.
Bean spokesman Rich Donaldson stressed that things are at a very preliminary stage right now and was not sure that Eddie Bauer would necessarily emerge intact from the bankruptcy proceedings.
He did hint that an acquisition of Seattle-based Bauer might be a continuation of Bean’s regional retail expansion begun four years ago.
Bean has four large stores in Maine, Virginia, Maryland and New Jersey.
According to news reports, the purchase of Bauer would double the sales of Bean and provide a huge boost to its efforts to make retail stores a more substantial part of a business that relies heavily on mail order.
Bauer has more than 500 stores nationwide, a catalog arm that does more than 100 million mailings each year, several Web-based retail sites, a high-profile brand and sales of $1.4 billion last year.
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