Successful Entrepreneurship: The Case of L.L. Bean

video stores from 19 at the end of 1986 to 415 at December 31, 1988. In the same period revenue

By 1906 Sears was operating the largest mail order plant in the world, but that necessitated that the company’s focus shift from design dominance to products and process. Sears has entered the transitional stage of the Abernathy - Utterback Model. Sears is tasked with the need to handle mass orders economically and efficiently, and develops the ‘time scheduling system’, which brings chaos to the mail order industry and defines a significant core competence (Sears Archive, 2012). Around the same time, Sears’s customers are shifting their focus to quality, which drives the need to replace the fancy Sears catalog with a factual based catalog. Sears’s core competencies are innovation, mail order process, quality products, perceived value, and factual based advertisement (catalog).

Bean operated on premise that profits are an outcome of strong customer service, and was a byproduct of such. The lack of corporate focus on targeting specific strategies to increase profits was a glaring weakness. Their business model had never been challenged externally, and the company was still operating with a focus on catalog sales instead of refocusing efforts on the growing wave of retail and ecommerce. The company recognized they were in desperate need of employees who could process data and bring the web presence up to par with other competitors in the outdoor lifestyle industry.

1. How significant (quantitatively) of a problem is the mismatch between supply and demand for L.L. Bean?

LL Bean uses low inventory levels and medium-to-low prices in order to generate sales, customers who think North Face, Patagonia or Columbia to be too expensive will go to LL Bean for their slightly lower prices. Their online-presence is also very strong, and they both have good return policies. LL Bean and North Face are similar in their online presence, but where North Face went high quality, LL Bean went lower cost. They are both quick at delivering and both also have great value-added service as their lifetime guarantees are similarly famous.

* Retail Company is growing- its direct-to-consumer business grew from 8%-11%, went from 155 stores before 2012 to over 200 today.

GE’s profits on revenues that were up only 5% on the 2001 sales, which had declined 3% from the

We spent $1,245,000 on advertising this period, $50,000 more than the previous year. We found out we spent so much on advertising but the spread of spending on different media outlets were incorrect. As a result, we would allocate our spending differently for 2017. A large amount should be put into magazines and none into internet. According to the market research, magazines are the most effective method path in reaching customers. Furthermore, we increased our spending on branding from $250,000 to $275,000. We increased branding for this year in hopes it will continue to enhance overall brand awareness. As a result, we spent $25,000 more on branding for this year. However, the firm in first place spent almost double in branding compared to ours and it has clearly done the trick. Our company will continue to discuss branding spending moving forward. One problem that cost us this year was the increased price of the mountain bike. The price of $775 was the most expensive and we did not see the increase in sales we were

L.L. Bean, Inc. was started in 1912 by Leon Leonwood Bean to sell his invention of the Main Hunting shoe and was marketed to sports hunters via a mail order circular. Leon Gorman, L.L.'s grandson, succeeded him as president in 1967, and continued to build the company with his Grandfather’s golden rule in mind, "Sell good merchandise at a reasonable profit, treat your customers like human beings, and they'll always come back for more” (Schleifer, 1993). The company would continue to grow into a major catalog distributor, manufacturer, and retailer of outdoor sporting merchandise (Schleifer, 1993).

Sales Growth: The increase in sales over a specific period of time, often calculated ‎annually.‎

- One who creates a new business in the face of risk and uncertainty for

L.L.Bean started from making a hundred pair of boots, to becoming one of America largest mail order retailer of high quality outdoor goods and apparel for men, women and children. Leon Leonwood Bean founded L.L. Bean in 1912; the company headquarters is in Freeport, Maine. Leon Leonwood Bean founded his business on a belief in honesty, commitment to quality, customer satisfaction and a passion for the outdoors.

Ownership of tanneries, factories and leather research centers maintained the firm’s brand of commitment to quality and boosted the company’s ambition and confidence in delivering products that met customer expectations

Without disciplined direction, no one achieves and sustains success without it (Maxwell, 2002). Yvon Chouinard exemplifies this trait, using discipline and perseverance to develop a successful business while staying true to his personal values. With success came a strong sense of responsibility. Chouinard realized that a profitable company not only provided the opportunity to achieve personal goals, but made it possible to make the company an outstanding place to work, and to be an important resource for environmental activism. Chouinard’s first business began out of dissatisfaction over the quality of climbing hardware, so he taught himself blacksmithing and began forging his own equipment. Soon, he was able to support himself by selling equipment to climbers from the back of his car, and by the 1970s, his company had grown to be the largest domestic supplier of climbing equipment. By 1973, their clothing line had expanded and grown popular enough to necessitate its own label, so Patagonia was born (naturally advanced.wordpress.com). Due to the popularity of their products, Patagonia began to grow rapidly in the 1980s; at one point they made Inc. Magazine's list of the fastest-growing privately held companies. That rapid growth came to a halt in 1991, when a recession caused sales to slow and banks required the company to pay off their revolving loan, making it necessary to

1. A brief history of the brand: origins, key stages in its growth , etc.