Customer Reviews

L.L. Bean: The Making of an American Icon

5 star:		(10)
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2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

L. L. Bean is the classic example of the cultural icon company... One that has been around forever, runs by a different set of rules, and has a fanatically loyal customer base. Leon Gorman, the last family member to serve as President of the company, recounts the history and struggles in his book L. L. Bean: The Making of an American Icon. It's an interesting look at how doing a few things correctly can overcome a number of other things done really badly.

Contents:
Part 1 - 1960 - 1967: L. L. Gives Me a Job; Learning the Business; Who Will Succeed L. L.?
Part 2 - 1968 - 1975: A Committee of One; Living the L. L. Story; "To Run A Perfect Company"
Part 3 - 1976 - 1990: Taking L. L. Bean Professional; Fashion Boom and Bust; Back on Track; End of an Era
Part 4 - 1991 - 2000: TQ and Other Ventures; A Loss of Relevance; Time for Transformations; Platform for Growth
Epilogue; Voices; Notes; Bibliography; Index

Leon Gorman was hired by his grandfather, L. L. Bean, back in 1960 right out of the Navy. Gorman really didn't have specific responsibilities, but Bean wouldn't turn down a family member. Gorman spent most of his time learning about the company, how it operated, and how business flowed from one end to the other. At this point in time, L. L. Bean was a small catalog operation with one quirky retail store in Maine. The target audience was outdoorsmen, and all the apparel and merchandise sold reflected the feelings and opinions of what Bean thought was the best buy in any given category. This approach started back in 1912 and continued to carry forth at the time Gorman was hired. But Bean was getting old, had no real plan for succession of the company, nor did he really want to grow it any larger. But in late 1967, Gorman took over after the deaths of both L. L. and Carl, his son. The challenge then became one of retaining the L. L. Bean image while growing the company to one that would be known worldwide for quality apparel and active gear.

Bean's no-nonsense, fair value approach to business worked well at a certain size, but there were no processes in place to support growth. The types of things we all take for granted now (inventory control, accounting packages, etc.) were nonexistent. There were also a number of wars going on internally over whether the focus of outdoor activities should be scrapped for a wider appeal (think Abercrombie and Fitch or Norm Thompson). Since this is told in first person story fashion, Gorman takes the reader through his view of what he was trying to accomplish, and how he had to navigate some pretty tricky waters, such as running a family-owned business whose principals didn't all have the same goals and objectives...

The thing I liked most about this book is that it doesn't attempt to paint Gorman as an all-knowing leader who could do no wrong. Plenty of mistakes were made, and any one of them could have permanently damaged the company. But everyone learned the lessons they paid for, and the company kept moving forward, imperfections and all. This is an excellent read for any business leader who is struggling to balance growth against tradition. L. L. Bean has been successful in balancing those two often-conflicting values, and there's a lot to glean from these pages...

Don't let the cute color painting of a pair of Maine Hunting Shoes on the dust jacket fool you. This is a business biography, with the emphasis on business. It tells the story of the LL Bean mail order and retail merchandising company as seen by Leon Gorman, who propelled the business from a $4.7 million enterprise in 1967 to $1+ billion in sales when he retired as company president to become chairman in 2001.

The preface and first 56 pages are a history of LL Bean, the business, starting with its 1912 origin as a manufacturer and mail order merchant of the iconic rubber/leather Maine Hunting Shoe invented by the author's grandfather, Leon L. Bean. LL Bean, the man, was born the son of a Maine horse trader in 1872, orphaned at age 12, and left school after the eighth grade to do manual labor and hunt and fish in Maine woods. LL's genius, after inventing his famous boot, was to sell products he wanted to buy himself and used a catalog he wrote himself to give customers - mostly city folks from the start - a feeling of connection to the rustic, outdoor life of the Maine woods even if they were just buying a sandwich knife (whatever happened to the one I bought from them?). When I visited the Freeport, ME store as a teenager in 1964 my father pointed out a handwritten note tacked to a door leading from the store to stockrooms that read "Keep this d--n door shut! LL Bean." In 1967, Mr. Bean, well into his 90s, passed away with his hand still firmly on the helm of the business. Almost immediately Carl Bean, second in command under his father, LL, also passed away. So Leon Gorman, a Colby College graduate who joined the company in 1960 after a three-year stint as a Navy officer, became head of the family business. Any loyal LL Bean customer will enjoy this much of the book.

The remaining 240 pages offer a surprisingly detailed account of the decade-by-decade trek Leon Gorman lead his company on through the thickets of image maintenance, merchandising decisions, catalog and mailing list strategies, warehouse construction, customer service training, adoption and abandonment of corporate management techniques with names like The Best and Total Quality, comings and goings of senior managers and choices about things like building an LL Bean presence in Japan and opening retail flagship stores outside Maine. Gorman's main challenge was to grow the much larger and more profitable casual clothing side of the business without losing the company's unique heritage associated with serious outdoor clothing and equipment. The story is told from Leon's perspective with anecdotes and somewhat - but not very - different perspectives extracted from interviews with former and current employees and senior managers. As both a business consultant and an LL Bean customer I liked all this material and think Mr. Gorman writes most of it with a clear, fast moving style that made me want to keep reading to find out what happens next. But the bulk of the book may come across to general readers as too much of an extended business school case study lecture and, indeed, the book is published by the Harvard Business School Press.

Mr. Gorman's genius was twofold. First, he never abandoned his grandfather's core philosophy to "sell good merchandise at a reasonable profit (and) treat your customers like human beings" and he instilled that philosophy by personal example and by hiring managers inclined to believe it as well. Second, he refused to walk away from the heritage of being a trusted provider of serious outdoor equipment that could stand up to four-seasons of use in the forests and mountains of Maine or anywhere else. Gorman realized that LL Bean's sustainable differential advantage - or "brand" - was inextricably linked to its credibility as an expert provider of active outdoor equipment and clothing. He realized many customers would eventually abandon the company if they concluded there was no substance behind the Maine outdoor image. So even though it was less profitable and had less growth potential, Gorman insisted his managers aggressively grow the active outdoor business as a way to force preservation of a real heritage - not just a few old b&w photos scattered through the catalog - that continued the successful business his grandfather operated.

Mr. Gorman ends the story at his retirement as president in 2001. For unexplained reasons no member of his immediate or extended family worked at senior levels in the company so Leon spent two years using advisors to work out a plan to retain family ownership but turn management over to a much younger non-family LL Bean colleague, Chris McCormick. In a brief epilogue Mr. Gorman summarizes the five years between his retirement and the book's publication with a positive spin. However, newspaper articles available on the internet indicate that LL Bean's sales growth stagnated or even dipped a bit in the first years under new management - which coincided with a national economic recession - before growing again. Just last year they resumed the retail store strategy that fizzled after the first three openings in 1999.

The book has sixteen pages of photos of important characters and LL Bean heritage, a useful index, footnotes of sources cited and a brief bibliography. The end papers have b&w reproductions of LL Bean catalog covers from the 1960s-2001 (Wish I'd kept some of mine!)

Recommended primarily to those seriously interested in business history, strategy development and mail order or retail merchandising. A secondary recommendation to LL Bean fans, but they'd better want to learn about return of equity, mailing list management, etc. As soon as I finished the book I called LL Bean - much more pleasant than placing an internet order - to buy a new pair of Maine Hunting Shoes which was paid for with my LL Bean credit card.

Leon Gorman, grandson of LL Bean, tells the tale of his ascension and rein as President & CEO of this American icon. The story is clearly told from Gorman's very personal perspective. During his 40 year tenure he takes on his own iconic role as a strong centralized decision maker and micro-manager, substituting himself for the powerful personality of LL Bean - but trying to not change much along the way. Having caught the same disease as his successful predecessor, Gorman involves himself in virtually every aspect of the company as it grows from $30 million to a billion dollars in revenue, retarding the growth of most of the company's aspiring management talent.

While the tale seems logical and true to life, the format is disjointed, with editorial insertions from managers who are supposed to be speaking their mind but never wander far from what appears to be Leon (Gorman) accepted opinions. Most add glowing praise for Mr. Gorman and seem to have been inserted to make the author feel better about his dictatorial style.

But the history of LL Bean is both interesting as well as informative. Assuming you can navigate through the bumpiness and filter out the propaganda, you can probably find some interesting lessons about family owned businesses and how to and not to pass them down through the generations.

Although the narrative sometimes gets a little disjointed, overall this is a readable and interesting account of the making of a great American outfitter and brand name. Gorman is quite frank in presenting the difficulties, conflicts, and internal growing pains that led to the company's strong market presence in the fickle retail world of the new millenium. He is honest about his own limitations and contributions, and how much he had to learn in order to grow into the job. For example, he discusses in detail how difficult it was for the company to change from being exclusively mail order to the retail store business, which just hadn't been their thing up till then, and many people were opposed to the idea. Many departments of the company, from marketing, warehousing, inventory control, product design, and management, were required to "raise the bar" and become far more systematic and professional in their approach, rather than operating like a small-town, family-owned business as it had up till then. But one of the great strengths of the company is that they managed to do this without sacrificing many of those values. Overall, a fine acount of how a great little company survived their growing pains into a much bigger enterprise without sacrificing body and soul to do it.

I agree with the previous reviewers that Leon Gorman does not hold himself up to be a great business leader or anything of the like. He did have a lot of passion and understood at his core what L.L. Bean should be as a business. But did he stick to that or did he bounce around and adopt any and all management theories coming out of that great bastion of "real" business knowledge of Harvard University? What new management method du jour did he not try? Ha!

He did gloss over quickly and with dismissal the complete outsourcing/off-shoring of 99% of all the goods they sell today. He made a quick and dismissive remark about prices (no duh) and quality they received from overseas (read China and the rest of Asia) vendors and manufacturers. Of course the cheap price part is correct but his assertion that they could not get the quality in the U.S. they wanted is a complete lie. (who knows about price..everyone else punted on U.S. manufacturing too) Does anyone really believe that Bean (the company) could not require complete and through requirements around quality from U.S. suppliers? When they require and receive them from Chinese companies? No. It was all about price and profit for L.L. Bean. Forget about supplying quality goods that "people like us" (you know many of them actually worked in mfg plants) want to use in the great outdoors.

Finally, what did L.L. Bean become? A clothing catalog (sure you can get the specialty ones but the sales are not there) for women to buy clothes for their spouses and children. Something he claimed that would never happen. Oh yeah the retail direction that Gorman runs from most of his this book..they have 14 stores and 13 outlets in the U.S. and 30 going to 80 in China. China.

The first part of the book is interesting and gives a nice view of the family dynamics of generational changes in leadership. The rest is just a documentation of a bouncing ball and chasing of the profit. Not a bad thing but not outstanding in anyway whatsoever.

Pretty much along the lines of Sam Walton's bio... contains some interesting bits of history, but for the most part it's a "sell job" on what a great company L.L. Bean founded. The only real significant information gleaned from the book was about Bean's "unconditional" guarantee. However, I did not need to spend the cost of a book to find out what they could easily include in the many catalogs they mail out each year. I expected to read a biography of Bean himself and instead was treated to a study of corporate growth and how it was achieved. One can easily read the entire book in less than 2 hours! In the overall, it was dull.

My Grandfather was an Adirondack Hunting/Fishing guide during the 1930s and 1940s. He had many items in his inventory that came from L.L. Bean. Being curious, I went to Freeport, Maine to visit the store. I was surprised to be there at a book signing. The signing was for "The Making of and American Icon" written by Leon Gorman. I was honored to meet this unbelievable person as well as his wife. Mr. Gorman signed my copy, listened to my short story and off I went. It was a great experience! This book is written very well with a great story to tell. If you're at all interested in L.L. Bean and the business' evolution, this is a book for you. Loads of great history and personal accounts from the people who actually worked and lived the history. Very well written. I'm keeping this one as an heirloom.

Following military service, the author, grandson of L.L. Bean, (the company's founder), was advised by the placement office at his alma mater, Bowdoin College, to seek employment at L.L. Bean in Freeport. Leon Gorman noticed that in comparison to the catalogs of the thirties, where copy was written by L.L., the catalog in 1959 was a hodgepodge.
In 1960 L.L. Bean was about ninety and responsible for decisionmaking, but not capable of conducting the business. There were no systems of manufacture or sales. Work in the core business had virtually stopped in wartime when manufacturing was devoted to turning out goods for the government. Resumption of the core business had been feeble in execution. Response to customer orders was slow. There were arguments with customers. Employees were ill-paid, but the establishment was known as a good place to work. (There was a bonus plan.) There was no pension plan. Many people filling critical positions were elderly. The author's father had worked for the company.

Interestingly, during an era of vigorous leadership by the founder, the thirties, the company did well. By the 1960's his vision of the company was failing and there was no succession planning. Two secretaries oversaw order entry and mailing list tasks, in one instance, and advertising and catalog preparation, in the other instance. They consulted the founder and his demoralized son Carl only when necessary and then pushed and cajoled the men into making decisions in order to have things run smoothly. Wid Griffin, a third key employee, was particularly useful when sales increased during the Christmas season, (twenty-five percent of the annual business was done then in one month). Leon Gorman, the author, had a favorite competing company, Abercrombie and Fitch. It had high-quality credentials. A less desirable aspect was its elitism. Leon added items to the catalog by subterfuge, using the new items first in circulars. Following the deaths of his grandfather and uncle, Leon was named President of the company in 1967.

In the 1970's L.L. Bean mailed more catalogs than its competitors. Heavy inventories were maintained to support service levels. It was becoming a clothing-driven company. Leon's leadership training had been acquired from the Boy Scouts and the Navy. The challenge was to maintain old-fashioned values in a rapid growth environment. Leon Gorman's professional managers at Bean included John Findlay, Bill End, Norm Poole. L.L. Bean became fashionable for a time. The fashion wave crested in 1983. Growth stalled. Then the company grew by twenty percent in 1985! Specialty catalogs were added. In 1989 there was a fall-off in sales. The company was following a 'best' strategy which was costly in terms of return on investment. It was ringed by competitors copying its successes. There was a dichotomy between the active outdoor sphere, the area of the brand, and casual apparel, place of the greater number of sales. The managers sought to meet the conflicting demands articulated by the directors.

In the early 1990's some of the leaders resigned to be replaced by people up from the ranks or drawn from the outside. A scheme termed Total Quality was pursued for more than six years. In 1995 the L.L. Bean Japanese business collapsed, suddenly, and there was an actual over-all decline experienced from 1996 to 1998. Consultants discovered that within the company at the higher levels of management there existed self-censorship and conflict-avoidance behaviors. Chris McCormick became President of L.L. Bean in 2001.

This is a wonderful book, particularly for readers who would love to learn about a business compelled to be both traditional, unchanging, and up-to-date to maintain the interest of its loyal customers.

I learned much about Leon Gorman, L.L. Bean and running a business. What truly held me captive was the underlying message: "Stay true to yourself and your core beliefs." No matter the changing of the guard at or the changing environment surrounding L.L. Bean, it always stood for (and still does today) loyalty (to the core business, employees and customers alike), quality and customer service. Sure, adaptations were made, but the core remained the same. I always looked at L.L. Bean as an unbelievably successful company, but did not know until reading the book the amazing sense of pride and loyalty that has been imbedded in the hearts and minds of the employees and customers. Such can only be the result of Leon Gorman's leadership and tireless work ethic in maintaining L.L. Bean's as it was and as it no doubt will be in the future. Many executives can learn a lot from reading this book and understanding the message.

This book is perfect for any longtime Bean customers or people interested in business, investing, and definitely merchandising. Leon Gorman, the grandson of LL Bean, tells the full story of the company, starting with its founding, though naturally most of the book is dedicated to his tenure there, which covered 40+ years. The company's story is fascinating, encouraging, and educational on many different levels. And Leon does a great job telling the story in a very conversational tone.

The book perfectly embodies LL Bean. Leon wrote the book with the utmost integrity, openness, and honesty. His intention in writing the book was truly to tell the story as factual as possible, so it can best serve as an example and lesson for others. In fact, he included many, many quotations from other Bean employees throughout the book (and they're not all flattering). In fact, he himself admits mistakes and shortcomings. I do not believe the book was marketing material as others have proposed. I see how it could be taken as that because the main focus is LL Bean. However, it's a book on LL Bean, what do you want him to talk about, Walmart? How you see it depends on your attitude toward businesses and life.

My favorite parts? I was really interested to learn all the struggle Bean has faced over the years. As a Maine native especially, it's easy to take for granted Bean's success. However, Leon really shines a light on all the struggles and mistakes they've made over the years. In fact, I am somewhat surprised they have grown to a billion dollar company today given some of the stories in here. Like how in the later years of L.L. Bean, he was largely an absent owner, but all major decisions still required his approval thus the business was relatively stagnant. Or how difficult it was (and still is I'm sure) to clearly define their brand and stay true to their values. It's easy to see higher profits in certain fashion trends and jump on the bandwagon, however this is something they have largely resisted over the years. Or how they didn't have professional budgeting until very late in the companies life. Or how tightly Leon controlled the company. They've truly stayed true to their values over the years and treat all their stakeholders fairly (community, customers, employees, owners, suppliers).

Also, there are many great business and life lessons in here. The book was filled with stories of hard work, vision, patience, and values. Leon tried hard to create a company that could serve as an example for others. A company that was truly a good citizen. I don't think it's a coincidence that they will be celebrating their 100th anniversary next year.

Overall, after the reading this book, I have even more respect and appreciation for LL Bean. This book is a great addition to any business library collection. I will admit that the conservation tone can get confusing sometimes (I had to reread sentences sometimes), and I was tempted to give it 4 stars for that. However, after contemplating this for a while, I think the story off LL Bean is best told this way. Straightforward and simple. If it was any other way, it wouldn't feel right.