‘Beans’ Sprouting Up All Over

SOUTH WINDSOR, CONN. —More than 95 years after it opened its first store in Freeport, Maine, sporting goods and apparel retailer L.L.Bean (also known to loyal fans simply as Beans) is undergoing its most aggressive growth phase in company history, including the opening of its most recent store, a mall-based unit in northwestern Connecticut. The store, which anchors a new outdoor “lifestyle” mall in South Windsor, contains a handful of the retail theatrics that have become the calling card of its flagship store in Freeport, including a kyack wall, fishing demonstrations, an oversized fish tank and a cycling service department.

The opening is part of a larger growth movement within the organization that began in 2000 with the opening of a new store in McLean, Virginia, the company’s first store outside its home state of Maine (excluding outlet locations), and only its second store overall. Since that opening, however, expansion has multiplied. The company has opened at least one store in the Maryland, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts as well as Connecticut, and plans to open a new store in the Albany, N.Y., market next week. In total, the company currently operates nine retail stores in six states (not including New York) and more than 12 outlets. Plans are also under way for a second Massachusetts location to open in November, with a third in early 2008.

“Our expansion in Massachusetts signals what we will be doing in retail over the next couple of years,” president and ceo Chris McCormick anounced last summer. “We now have three locations confirmed in Massachusetts and are working to establish a similar presence throughout southern New England, New York and the Mid-Atlantic. Within a few years I expect L.L.Bean will have 25 stores, and we are currently reviewing sites for store locations that would extend our radius westward by 2009.”