Meet the family behind the L.L. Bean empire
Shawn Patrick Ouellette/Portland Press Herald via Getty Images
- L.L. Bean has grown from a small-town business to an international outdoor brand.
- The company is still owned and largely managed by descendants of founder Leon Leonwood Bean.
- Here's a look at the family behind the maker of Bean Boots.
L.L. Bean field jackets, shoes, and other outdoor apparel are popular — even stylish — for many consumers.
But unlike many big brands, L.L. Bean remains a family affair.
The company has been owned and managed by Leon Leonwood Bean and his descendants since Bean founded it in 1912. The company has not gone public, and while its CEO is from outside the family, Bean's heirs still play a commanding role.
Here is the story of L.L. Bean's founding family:
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Bean, who was an orphan by age 12, grew up working on farms. Eventually, he landed a job working in his brother's shoe store and became the manager of a second store in Freeport, Maine that they called "Bean Bros.," according to a biography of Bean on the company website.
Bean also enjoyed hunting and fishing, particularly "the thrill of the chase and the camaraderie of fellow hunters," according to the company's biography.
Paolo Picciotto/REDA&CO/Universal Images Group via Getty Images
Bean developed the Maine Hunting Shoe after dealing with wet leather boots during a hunting trip, according to L.L. Bean's website. To create something better, he used rubber shoe soles and had a high top added to them to create something that looked part-shoe, part-boot.
Many of L.L. Bean's early shoes fell apart after customers started using them, the Wall Street Journal reported. So Bean improved the shoe and sent revised versions out. He also listened to customer feedback on new products, according to the Journal.
He used a flyer to sell his Maine Hunting Shoe, according to the company. It was the start of a catalog and mail-order business that L.L. Bean maintains to this day.
John Ewing/Portland Press Herald via Getty Images
After Leon Leonwood passed away in 1967, Leon Gorman took over as L.L. Bean's president.
An avid outdoorsman like his grandfather, Leon brought his interests to the company and its products. "I couldn't imagine working for a company where I couldn't use the products and develop a passion for them," he wrote in his 2006 memoir, according to an excerpt on the L.L. Bean website.
Gorman also set up L.L. Bean's "Stakeholder Philosophy," which the company still uses today.
"We don't measure success based on profit, but on the well-being of all our stakeholders — including customers, employees, the community, the environment and vendors," Shawn Gorman, Leon's nephew, said in an interview excerpt on the company website.
AP/Joel Page
Under Gorman's leadership, L.L. Bean went far beyond selling its products through the mail.
Sales grew from less than $5 million in 1967 to well above $1 billion annually by the time Gorman stepped down from management, according to the company.
In the 1990s and early 2000s, L.L. Bean added to its store in Freeport by opening locations in other parts of the U.S. as well as Japan.
Today, L.L. Bean has 47 retail stores outside of its home state. It also operates 10 outlet stores in the Northeastern U.S. In Freeport, where its operations are headquartered, L.L. Bean has a seven-acre retail campus and a 16-foot-tall statue of a Bean Boot, according to the company.
AP
Under Gorman, L.L. Bean started offering customers experiences, not just products.
In 1979, the company started offering excursions for wintertime activities from its Maine store.
Today, the Outdoor Discovery Programs allow customers to "enjoy outdoor activities and learn new skills" through trips focusing on activities from fly fishing to snowshoeing, according to the company.
Ben McCanna/Portland Portland Press Herald via Getty Images
Gorman stepped down as president and CEO in 2001, according to the company. He then became chairman of the board, a role he held until 2013.
He died in 2015. In his honor, L.L. Bean's flagship store in Freeport closed for his funeral.
That year, the family had a net worth of $1.9 billion, according to Forbes. That placed them at #134 on the magazine's list of America's richest families, though they dropped out of the ranking in 2016.
Shawn Patrick Ouellette/Portland Press Herald via Getty Images
A great-grandson of L.L. Bean and nephew of Leon Gorman, Shawn Gorman worked his way up the family business, starting as an analyst in L.L. Bean's marketing department in 1991, per the company's website.
Shawn Gorman didn't originally intend to work in the family business, he said in a 2015 interview with UNH Today, the magazine of the University of New Hampshire, his alma matter. Only after working in sales elsewhere did he decide to join L.L. Bean, he said.
Getty/Derek Davis
L.L. Bean remains a privately held, family-owned company, and dozens of descendants of L.L. Bean have a say in the business, the company has said.
While the board of directors head the company, they also work with an "owners' council" composed of family members to make important decisions about the company, Gorman told Mainebiz in 2023.
"The owners' council forum makes space for dissenting points of view to be heard and considered, with the goal of delivering a reflection of those points of view to the business through the board of directors," Gorman said.
L.L. Bean is also managed by a CEO, Stephen Smith, who isn't related to the founding family.
Gregory Rec/Portland Portland Press Herald via Getty Images
Many descendants of L.L. Bean made their lives in Freeport and other areas of Maine.
L.L. Bean granddaughter and company board member Linda Bean, for instance, spent much of the last two decades building a lobstering business in the state, including facilities to process the catch and a series of consumer-facing products, such as lobster claws, the New York Times reported in her obituary.
She also opened a restaurant chain with locations in Maine and Florida, the Times reported.
AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty, File
After Donald Trump was elected president in 2016, a movement called #GrabYourWallet added L.L. Bean to a list of companies that it encouraged customers to boycott over their connections to Trump. #GrabYourWallet cited Linda Bean's support of a pro-Trump Political Action Committee when it added the brand to its list, Esquire reported in early 2017.
In response, Shawn Gorman said in a Facebook post at the time that Bean was "only one of 50+ family members involved in the business."
"L.L.Bean does not endorse political candidates, take positions on political matters, or make political contributions," Gorman wrote. "Simply put, we stay out of politics."
Trump later acknowledged Bean's support in a post on X, then known as Twitter. "Buy L.L. Bean," the post read in part.
Linda Bean had previously supported conservative political causes. She also ran unsuccessfully for Congress, losing a Republican primary in 1988 and a general election in 1992.
Linda Bean died in March at the age of 82, according to the New York Times.
Blake Nissen for The Boston Globe via Getty Images
As COVID-19 spread around the US in early 2020, some L.L. Bean employees paused their work on Bean boots and other products to make personal protective equipment for medical workers.
The employees used material meant for dog-bed liners to make face masks, CEO Stephen Smith told CNBC in March that year. The effort produced 350,000 masks, according to the company.
Billie Weiss/Boston Red Sox/Getty Images
L.L. Bean ran his business by a "golden rule," Gorman told NBC's Today in a July interview.
"To sell good merchandise at a reasonable profit, treat people like human beings and they'll always come back for more," Gorman said.
"That holds true today," he added.
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