L.L. Bean is a privately held, family-owned company with mail order, online and retail outlets internationally. The home office is based in Freeport, Maine in the United States and specializes in clothing and outdoor recreation equipment along with expert advise and educational experiences for many outdoor activities.

The company was started in 1912 by Leon Leonwood (L.L.) Bean, a man who loved the outdoors and wanted a boot that would keep his feet from being cold and damp. He had an idea for waterproofing boots by attaching leather uppers to rubber boots. He enlisted the help of a cobbler in Greenwood, Maine to create such a boot and called them The Maine Hunting Shoe or as others have come to call them, The Bean Boot. Manufacturing of the boot was started in the basement of an apparel shop belonging to Mr. Bean’s brother with the target customer being hunters in the state of Maine... The first step was to make a small brochure which had a guarantee of satisfaction and then find a market for the product. L.L. Bean obtained a list of the non-residents that held Maine hunting license and sent each name the brochure. It wasn’t long before he had 100 orders for the shoe... However, the shoe had a problem where the bottom separated from the top and 90 of the 100 orders were returned. The purchase price had to be refunded which resulted in a short setback in L.L. Bean’s business venture. The problems with the shoe were corrected and again a 100 brochures were made and mailed out to hunters. New orders were received and the sales venture was finally a success. From this experience, the company learned the need to test a product for good quality and to provide excellent customer satisfaction. To date, this remains the L.L. Bean philosophy of doing business. As the present L.L. Bean president, Chris McCormick states: “Superior customer service has always been and always will be the cornerstone of our brand and heritage and an attribute that differentiates us from the rest of the pack. It goes back to L.L.’s Golden Rule of treating customers like human beings.”

Today, over 20,000 items are stocked for sale through the catalogs, web site and retail stores with L.L. Bean having their own product research, development and testing labs. The competition of L.L. Bean’s outdoor gear includes many retail stores and on line stores such as C&C Outdoor, Outdoor Gear, REI, Backcountry and Great Outdoor while their apparel products compete with such stores as Ralph Lauren, Brooks Brothers, J Crew and others Some [[Bean’s]] products have remained as stable products for decades shown in the 2008 production of 55 catalogs distributed to the 50 U.S. states and 160 countries resulting in nearly 13 million customer contacts. http://www.llbean.com/customerService/aboutLLBean/background.html?nav=ln

The founder, L.L. Bean ran the company until his death in 1967 at the age of 94. In 1967, L.L. Bean's grandson Leon Gorman took over the company and continued to carry on his grandfather's type of leadership and customer service but with expansion and modernization of their facilities and operations. A more modern and bigger manufacturing facility was erected and the old customer mailing list of fewer than a million names was computerized for future growth.

The credit card was introduced into the companys operation in 1976 giving the shopper a 24 hour a day, 365 days a year service through catalog and the original store in Freeport, Maine which to this day still keeps 24/7 hours. The original store has only been closed twice since its beginning, when L.L. Bean passed away and again when President Kennedy passed away. There was rapid growth of the company in the 1980s when a toll free number was added, expanding the customer service. The company also bought some sporting camps for employees to spend time at and enjoy the outdoor to know first hand the products and the outdoor factor which was one of the basis of the company. In 1992, the company expanded internationally to Tokyo, Japan and then in 2000, the company expanded stores beyond the state of Maine with the opening of a McLean, Virginia store. From 2001 to 2008 more stores were opened in Maryland, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, and Illinois.

In 2001, Leon Gorman became the Chairman Of The Board and passed the company leadership to Chris McCormick, the first non-family head of L.L. Bean. The company continued to grow and in 2008, it reported sales of over 1.5 billion employing over [[5,400 people year around and more than 12,000 seasonal employees servicing nearly 13 million customer contacts. http://www.llbean.com/customerService/aboutLLBean/background.html?nav=ln