L.L. Bean

I’ve just spent a couple of days in the great state of Maine. Lobster was on the menu and so was a visit to L.L. Bean.

L. L. Bean as a mercantile, catalogue enterprise started out because Leon Leonwood Bean had cold, wet feet. He was a hunter and every time he headed backcountry, in the late fall and early winter, his feet would get cold.

So in 1912, Leon Leonwood had an idea. He developed a specialized lace-up boot with a rubber bottom and leather top. He started making them in the basement of a relatives shop in Freeport, Maine. It was a fine warm dry boot and the company L.L. Bean came into existence.

Today that same boot remains a best seller in their  catalogue business that have sales in the hundreds of millions dollars a year.

The store itself is still in Freeport and is open 24 hours a day, every day of the year and is still run on L.L.'s philosophy. If you give a customer a quality product, word of mouth will keep you in business.

What make's L.L. Bean unique and no doubt successful is a policy that has never changed since the old man began selling his hunting boots. If at anytime you are unsatisfied with anything you buy at Bean's send it back, they will either give you a new one, or refund your money. They will do so, even if you brought the item years earlier.

Even if you loose a button on a Bean shirt, write them and tell them, they will send you a button to match

That kind of service has made them big business, so big in the mail order trade, that they have their own zip code.  04033 is quite a legacy.