L.L. Bean sales up, heading for $1.3B

PORTLAND – Sales at L.L. Bean rose about 10 percent during the holiday period over a year earlier, putting the company on track to exceed $1.3 billion in sales for its current fiscal year.

The Freeport-based clothing and outdoors company saw sales increase by 11 percent through catalogs and the Internet, and by 4 percent at its retail stores in the four weeks leading up to Christmas, said Bean spokesman Rich Donaldson.

The performance outpaced sales at retail stores nationwide. December sales rose by 5 percent over 2003 at clothing stores and by 4.2 percent at sporting goods stores, according to the Department of Commerce.

At L.L. Bean, the increased revenues were offset in part by price-cutting and higher marketing and staffing costs, Donaldson said. The company increased its seasonal staff from 5,500 to 7,500 for the 2004 holiday season, he said, and spent more money on TV advertising in the months leading up to Christmas.

Still, the numbers show that Bean is taking market share away from other specialty retailers, he said.

“By and large, we’re feeling very good about L.L. Bean and the fact that the company is on the move in the right direction,” Donaldson said.

L.L. Bean, which has about 4,000 full-time workers, is among the largest private employers in the state and serves as a bellwether for the shopping climate in Maine.

Bean was helped during the holiday season by a late wave of customer buying. In the final two weeks before Christmas, sales were up 35 percent from the same two weeks in 2003, Donaldson said.

He credited the late surge to Christmas falling on a Saturday, late-season price cuts and customer confidence in getting merchandise in the mail on short notice in time for Christmas.

The National Retail Federation said retail sales nationwide in December were helped by a late swell of spending. The trade association said end-of-month spending was spurred by post-Christmas discounting and gift-card redemptions.

December sales figures were not available for catalog or online sales; about 75 percent of Bean’s revenues come through catalogs and the Internet.

But sales for companies that rely on shop-at-home customers generally go in the same direction as sales at stores, said Amy Blankenship, spokeswoman for the Direct Marketing Association.

“The same economic factors that affect retail affect catalog and Internet sales,” she said.

For Bean’s fiscal year, which ends at the end of February, the company is expecting sales to reach $1.3 billion, Donaldson said.

Sales had increased about 10 percent to $1.2 billion in 2003, the first sizable sales jump in nearly a decade. Annual sales had been holding steady at about $1.1 billion.

But while revenues are increasing, Bean is operating on slimmer margins because of price cuts that all retailers are experiencing, Donaldson said.

“It puts additional pressures on the company,” he said. “And we don’t anticipate those pressures going away any time soon.”