Outdoor-equipment cataloger L.L. Bean will open 26 retail stores around the country over the next several years, according to a report Saturday in the Boston Globe.
The Freeport ME-based retailer told the paper that the new retail store opened last weekend, in the Boston suburb of Burlington MA, will be the first in a brick-and-mortar expansion campaign that will increase the number of its U.S. stores by 500%. Bean is also reportedly looking at locations in Canada and Costa Rica.
The company now runs five retail stores, including one at its headquarters and others as far afield as Tysons Corner VA and Columbia MD. It also operates 14 outlet stores in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic states.
According to the article, Bean is patterning its retail growth on that of Williams-Sonoma, which also made the transition from catalog to multiple channels, and has hired executives with in-store retail experience.
The Burlington store just opened will offer most products found in the Bean catalog, including apparel and outdoor equipment. It will feature a full bicycle store and on-staff mechanic and an “outdoor discovery school” for lessons in skills such as fly fishing. The new store is located at the edge of a shopping center, so that customers needn’t haul bulky equipment purchases long distances to their cars.
“This is huge,” Ken Kacere, senior vice president of Bean’s retail stores, told the paper. “The future depends on what happens in Burlington.”
L.L. Bean’s last retail initiative took place six years ago. But those efforts were halted by inventory problems such as merchandise shipping to stores without size or price tags, and customer dissatisfaction at not being able to buy the complete catalog inventory in stores.
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