December 8, 2022 • 38 mins
Over 100 years ago, L.L. Bean combined leather with rubber to create a unique shoe that would keep his feet warm when he went fishing. The result? The Maine Hunting Shoe, a functional, innovative boot that changed footwear forever. Today, his great grandson, Shawn Gorman is the Chairman of the family owned business. Shawn talks about his role as a steward of the brand, abiding by a set of golden rules and the restorative power of the outdoors.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi, and welcome back to Out of Office. I'm your host,
Malika Kapoor. This week, my guest is someone who believes
in the healing power of the outdoors. Sean Gorman is
a chairman of the company L. L. Bean. He's also
the great grandson of its founder L. L. Being the
man behind this iconic brand that is now over a
(00:23):
hundred years old. I spoke to Sean about carrying forward
his great grandfather's legacy, working in the family business, about
lessons from the pandemic, and being a steward of the environment.
Here's our conversation. Sean, Welcome to Out of Office. Thank
(00:44):
you so much for having me. Sean, where do you
join us today? From where are you? I'm in our
headquarters at L. L. Bean and Report Maine in Maine. Yes, okay, great?
Now LLL. Beam is the founder of your company, but
also your great grandfather. Was there ever a doubt that
you would work at mL being? Oh wow, Yes, there
(01:09):
was certainly a doubt. I never really had any intention
of working in the company. I knew of the company
as I was growing up. Um L was my great grandfather,
but no one really made that strong being connection because
my my last name's Gorman, so l L had two
sons and a daughter. His daughter, Barbara is my grandmother,
(01:32):
who married my grandfather, Jack Gorman, and they had three boys,
one of which is my father and my dad, Jim Gorman,
never worked in the business. He was an engineer and
he worked for Bell Labs down in Massachusetts. So I
grew up in New Hampshire. My last name was Gorman,
and we didn't have a lot of connection to the
(01:54):
Being company. My dad served on the board, but there
wasn't that that really strong connection, and there wasn't any
push from my dad to join the company. He wanted
me to be my own person and do what I
wanted to do. When you joined the company, you joined
at an entry level position, isn't that right? Yeah? I was.
(02:17):
I was at a very entry level position when I
joined the company. Um, I'll tell you a little bit
about how I joined the company. So when so Being,
you know the exposure that I had to allow being
and one of the reasons why I thought it never
was a good fit for me was, um, I was
always kind of exposed at a young age to the
highest level people. So I'd have my uncle, who was
(02:39):
the CEO muh. The different members of the management team,
whether a chief marketing officers that would come and visit
my dad or talk to my dad about the business.
And they were very serious people, and they were doing
wonderful work, and they're great people. But I didn't really
connect to them as much as I thought I might.
(03:00):
And when I thought of l L Being, I thought
of a very focused management company with excellent leaders, most
with Harvard m b A's who UM probably wouldn't connect
real well with me. And so I took a job
initially out of college. I mean, my dream was to
um work on Madison Avenue. I wanted to write copy.
(03:23):
I wanted to kind of fulfill this creative side of mine.
I'm a highly analytic person, but I also have this
really strong need for creativity. But unfortunately, when I graduated
from college in the late eighties, uh, we're in a
recession and Madison av was closing shops and and there
wasn't that opportunity there. So my mother, who had a
(03:46):
recent college graduate who wasn't employed, was pushing me to
get a job. I didn't want to go to l
L Being. So I took a job in a sales position,
and I liked it, but I think what I found
was it wasn't I wasn't really passionate about it. It
was okay, and I actually made decent money, but I
just didn't see that as my future. So I had
(04:09):
two brothers who worked at Being and I talked to
them about how they enjoyed it, and they both loved it,
and they really highly encouraged me to join the company.
So I did. And interestingly, it didn't take too long
in this, even in this entry level role where it
started as an advertising analyst in the advertising department at
all Being, um, but it didn't take me long to
(04:31):
find that the people I was working with and the
company itself was it was something that I was very
passionate about. There was a strong push at ll Being
to inspire and enable people to enjoy the outdoors. That
was our push, that was our purpose. And yeah, I
really loved it. Now, I started at the bottom and
(04:52):
I worked hard, but it was working hard for something
that I truly believed it and I would really like
to work at a company, to work a way up
the ladder, at a company that is actually a family business. Well, um,
it's interesting. My dad didn't discourage me from joining the company.
(05:13):
But he wasn't encouraging me to join the company, and
I may be more towards his position of not encouraging
my children to join the company and to kind of
self actualized on their own and not have something tied
to you that's larger than you, this big brand. I
(05:33):
will tell you that it was great to be a
family member for getting into the business. L O being
was a highly sought after job. A lot of people
wanted to work here, so I had that that easy
in if you will. But once I was here, I
had a lot of eyes on me. So it wasn't
(05:55):
just my supervisor and my manager wondering how I'm performing
or letting me know only performing. I had people in
hr kind of checking in with me and giving giving
reports to my uncle who is the CEO, who was
curious about how the new kid doing. So it was
it was interesting, and I will tell you honestly, sometimes
(06:17):
it's really difficult. Particulars, particularly as I got higher up
with the management and you have perhaps you're a manager
and you're dealing with the director who's a couple of
pay grades above you, but they know that you are
a member of the board I mean I served on
the board, it was an employee, and that fear that
(06:38):
if they gave you bad feedback it might come back
to them was present. So I didn't always get the
best feedback, and I think you know that can slow
ones development. And my favorite bosses were those who who
were really clear and said, I don't really care who
you are. You're you're an employee of mine, and this
is what I expect of you. And that was I
(07:00):
wore two hats at L a being, and I clearly
knew at which time I was wearing what hat. I
always functioned as an employee at LB, never as an owner.
But when I got into the boardroom, that's when I
switched hats, and I tried to keep those those two
roles very distinct. So I want to go back to
the beginning. Um the bean boot, which is of course
(07:21):
one of the most iconic products at your company has
created and continues to endure. Tell us a little bit
about how the bean boot came into being. I know
there's a great story which involves in your father. Yeah,
there is a great story, and you know it's it's
kind of built on our kind of our values. The
(07:43):
story really is what what developed our values? Perseverance as
as the most obvious one in this story. But L
L was an avid outdoorsman. He spent a lot of
time treking around the main woods. But at the age
of forty a key to determine that, he was just
tired of coming home from these trips with cold and
(08:04):
wet feet. So he took, um, you know, the benefits
of a rubber boot which keep your feet really dry, um,
and then the benefits of a leather boot which fit
very well, and combined them by combining that leather upper
to the rubber bottom, and he created the main hunting shoe.
So he took a list of out of state main
(08:24):
license main hunting license holders and sent a brochure to
them touting this this great product and um also expressing
a total satisfaction guarantee. And unfortunately for him, he about
ninety of the first one sold came back because the
(08:46):
leather uppers separated from the rubber bottoms, and it nearly
put him out of business. And this is where perseverance
comes in and integrity and respect um. He was a
man of his word, but he was also determined and
motivated to make sure that his product would function well.
So he borrowed four dollars from his brother. He perfected
(09:10):
the stitching process which we still use today, which is
a triple stitch, and it's it's you'll see it throughout
l being DNA and a lot of our products. And
he re sent out brochures and the rest is history.
And that's where his his famous satisfaction guarantee came into
place as well. Yes, that's again legendary in your company,
(09:30):
isn't it. He's also come up. He came up with
the golden rule, right that to find your company, and
the golden rule is sell good merchandise at a reasonable
profit and treat your customers like human beings. And sometimes
that isn't always a case, right companies treating customers actually
being so bad. What I wanted to ask you is
(09:52):
what makes customer service at LL being different and unique.
I think it's again the values, it's it's our guiding principles,
it's the way we treat people. It's understanding that we're
a company that operates under a stakeholder model. So we
have six stakeholders. We have our employees, our customers, our
(10:17):
community are vendors are shareholders and the natural environment. So
when you think about it, we try to do things
that don't benefit any stakeholder at the expense of another,
and the customers is number one at LLL Being, and
very clearly and very early on, ll had that golden
(10:38):
rule and the end of that golden rule, if you
treat them like human beings, they'll always come back for more.
And that was his push. It was about building relationships
with customers, and it's about treating people honestly and fairly.
That's why his guarantee is so um, so memorable and
so iconic. And he wanted to ensure that anything you
(11:01):
bought for him from him was of high quality and
if it proved otherwise, bring it back. And we stand
by that today. So I think that initial way he
treated people and him expressing that golden rule. And then
when my uncle Leon took over LLL Being in the
mid sixties, ll L really Leon took those rules that
(11:26):
LLL had established and he codified them into our our
guiding principles and our values, and he made sure that
those permeated throughout the company. And my role as a
steward of this company is to ensure that those same
guiding principles. The way we do business is carried on
today and make sure that we shepherd that for future
(11:49):
generations and they understand it. So we have a very
clear guide book, if you will, of how to treat customers,
and it extends throughout the organization. It is really hard
go to LLL Being and find any employee who doesn't
embrace our values and our guiding principles. And one of
the values you had. One of the things that was
unique about your company is this ability to tell your
(12:12):
customers if something goes wrong or you don't like it,
bring it back. And this was available to them for
a lifetime, right they could bring it back any time,
but you changed it to one year recently, so that's correct.
And what we did was we were finding that a
lot of people were taking what LLL stood for and
(12:33):
took it to an extreme where ll LLL guarantee was
a satisfaction guarantee. I guarantee these products to give you
complete satisfaction. We were finding some customers who are bringing
back materials that they never purchased. They went to goodwill
(12:53):
and found L Being products, or they emptied out their
grandfather's you know, closet after repassed and they would bring
all this merchandise back and ask for a return on it.
And oftentimes we'd get customers who were returning a pair
of slippers that was twenty years old, completely worn out.
(13:14):
And to me, that would be the definition of satisfaction
where you're going to find a product so it's your
it's your expectations. So what we did is we had
a lot of customer complaints because people could see the
abuse taking place in our retail stores in lines that
retail stores were with the returning bags of goods and saying,
I know this impacts me because if you're taking all
(13:35):
this back, it's in your pricing that you have to to,
you know, build this in. So we made the change,
which was a very very difficult decision that took a
lot of family input, took a lot of management input,
and took a lot of communication with our customers to
get their input, and we created our satisfaction guarantee still exists.
(13:59):
The difference is you have one year to determine if
you're not satisfied with that product. After the first year,
that product fails for some mechanical defect or something that's
wrong with the product. We will always stand by that product,
and that continues to this day. So you can have
a product that if you expected it to last longer
(14:21):
or something went wrong and broke with it, we will
look at that product to make the decision as to
whether it's a manufacturer's defect and will will actually refund
or replace the product for you. We had overwhelmingly positive
response to this change from customers. I would say that
of the responses we got with regards to our change
(14:43):
in policy were people ecstatic that they no longer had
to witness people abusing our own And I think one
year is very generous for a turnaround time. You know,
normally you get one fourteen days or twenty eight days,
So I think one is fairly fairly general. Is you
talked about how this was a collective decision taken by
the family and also by management. You do have a
(15:06):
president and CEO who's not a family member. How does
that work? What's that relationship? Like? Sure, it works really
really well, so and why was it important to have
somebody who's not a family member. Well, I think what's
important is to find a leader that's best suited to
(15:27):
running the company and one that all family branch members
could aligned behind and when I became the chairman of
the company back in nineteen excuse me, back in two
thousand thirteen, um I was running the company with with
(15:48):
our excuse me, I was the chairman of the company,
with our CEO who had been a long term member
of the Latin company but not a family member. We
had an external CEO prior to our current CEO. As
that gentleman left the company, Chris McCormick, we started a
CEO search and it was actually a wonderful gift for
(16:11):
me because I had my thoughts on the nature of
the business and the culture of LLL being that I
was trying to shift, and I was able as the
person hiring the CEO to work with the family members
and our independent board of directors to determine someone who
best fulfilled those cultural needs of LLL, being it would
(16:33):
be a great cultural fit as long as as well
as having these great technical abilities, which we found in
Steve Smith. When you talk about somebody who would make
a great cultural fit, what's the first thing you're looking for, Well,
it depends on the culture you're looking for. So so
what is the culture that defines a little bit right?
(16:55):
I grew up at an LLL being that was a
very high control culture, analytic culture, and that served us
well through the time when my uncle turned this business
into what it is today, this globally recognized brand. The
culture that I saw that LLL being wanted and the
(17:16):
employees of ll A being wanted and I wanted as
an employee of LLO being was one that was more transparent,
one that was more collaborative, and one that was more empowering.
So I was often doing work without fully understanding why
I was doing the work. So it was like, here's
(17:36):
what you should do. We've made the decision, do it,
and now we do things um in a very different way.
So the culture that I wanted was one with empathy.
I don't think fear is a good motivator. I think
one where we're empowered and we're tapping into that power
of our employee base. I think that UH great saying
(18:00):
that I heard from one of my employees is none
of us is as smart as all of us, meaning
that the collective thinking of a group generally gets much
better outcomes. And understanding that there are multiple types of intelligence.
People come out problems from many different ways, and as
you do that you come up with better solutions and
better outcomes to problems. So we now are functioning in
(18:23):
a very transparent world where we share our strategies. We
develop our strategies with input from the employees, and then
as we move forward with our our vision of being
that leading outdoor brand for everyone, people understand our vision,
they understand our mission, and what's most important is they
understand our purpose. And as they understand our purpose and
(18:45):
know that every decision we make should align with that purpose,
they are then empowered to perform in their roles and
we are seeing fabulous results. Sean, your company is what
a hundred years old? A little over a hundred years old. Yeah,
we just we just celebrated our anniversary in October, ten
years old and the brand is as strong as ever.
(19:11):
How do you stay relevant? I think that the secret
to staying relevant is to stay authentic. So as you
think about l L being as a brand, we are
again we have our purpose, which is to enable and
inspire people to discover the restorative power of being outside.
(19:34):
We want to get people outside because we think it
makes four a better lifestyle. L L talked about how
time outdoors added quantity and quality to his life. He's
got a great quote that said hunting and fishing was
the big lure that took me to the great outdoors
and away from the mean and petty things in life.
(19:56):
I think that's a wonderful quote. My uncle Lean talked
about the physical and spiritual benefits of spending time outside.
So that's purpose is alive and well, and everything we
do is fulfilling for that purpose, from the services we
provide to the way we treat people, the way we
give to charitable to ensure that we have accessibility for
(20:17):
everyone to participate in the outside and in the products
that we sell, and we stay true to that so
that authenticity is there. And I think if we started
moving down paths where we were chasing fashion or chasing trends,
or doing something that was out of character with who
we are, customers wouldn't accept that. Fortunately, we haven't done that,
(20:39):
and I think that's the piece of staying relevant. It's
staying authentic and knowing that you might be really hot
one day and you might not be so hot the
next day. But if you stay consistent and you stay
true to yourselves, your customer will know what to expect
from you. I want to take you back. I think
it was when you both when you gave the commencement
(21:01):
address at your alma mater, the University of New Hampshire,
and you spoke to the graduating class, and after a
very funny first story about how you overslept at your
own graduation and barely made it, you talked about life
lessons right, and you talked about these three small but
powerful words, and you said they've really helped you live
(21:23):
in adventurous and fulfilling life. And these words are outdoors,
which I understand values that you've spoken about. And balance.
What do you mean by balance and why did you
pick that word? Or um? It's interesting and I discovered
this UM while I was at LLLB. So balances is
(21:48):
when I referred to balance, I mean balance in one's life,
making sure you're balancing your work life with your family
life and your personal self and ensuring that you're treating
all of these equitably. And I will tell you that
I got out of balance UM at LL being out
(22:09):
of the gate, I had a real strong desire to achieve.
I was highly focused on my job and I spent
a lot of time and energy focused on UM achieving
more and graduating to different levels of responsibility within the company.
(22:29):
What can happen There is a couple of things. You
can lose the focus on family. And it's not like
I wasn't focused on family and wonderful family, um, but
there are things that I may have missed or things
that I might have regretted not doing with my children
more because I was putting my career first, and ultimately
(22:54):
I think that was for them so that I could
achieve things and provide for them things that I wanted
them to have, whether it was trips or gifts or whatever.
But in reality, they probably just wanted time with their
dad and and I think, um, after my children were born,
(23:17):
there were probably some spots where that wasn't wasn't happening
as much as it should and that led to some
personal imbalance of why am I not as satisfied in
life as I as I probably should be, and why
am I not as happy as I should be? And
interestingly enough, um, it was probably a family vacation that
(23:42):
helped me figure that out. And it was a family
vacation outdoors to a national park where we were, um
just struck by this beauty of this wonderful place. The
connections that I was making with my children were really powerful,
and the most beautiful thing was we were all off
(24:06):
of our devices. We were just present and enjoying each
other in these moments. And that's where the outdoors comes in,
because the outdoors is where I find my balance. If
I find myself in this hyper competitive, hyper stressed world
starting to race, I like to go outside and actually
see nature going about its business and understanding that there
(24:29):
is a natural order and a natural paste of things.
That's very calming and very satisfying. And when I can
spend time outdoors with my friends and family, what better
way to make connections. Yeah, it is, yes, absolutely. How
old are your children? I have a son who's twenty
(24:51):
five years old, and I have twin daughters who are
twenty two and are any of them going to join
the family business. That is to be determined right now.
I have two daughters who they just graduated from Loyal
and Merrimount in Los Angeles, and they are currently living
(25:12):
in Los Angeles pursuing writing careers. Oddly enough, all of
my children are English majors, just like their dads. Yeah
so um, but they are again wildly um intelligent and
creative and really good human beings, all of them. The
(25:32):
girls are are currently writing for a couple of publications
out there, which is great that they're both pursuing um
uh careers and acting. They went to a film school
with with that that hope they have landed as I'm
proud to say a couple of different parts, and that
has been fun to watch. And my my son lives
(25:54):
here in Maine and he's pursuing a career and as
a as an organic farmer. Just really kind of fun
to watch, and I'm not sure what his future holds,
but he is UM. He's done internships at l L
being working in our outdoor discovery schools and also UM
in our I T departments. He was he was a
(26:16):
computer science major at Wake Forest before he changed over
to to an English major, and so he's he spent
some time in I T and he enjoys that. So
it's here for them should they want it. But as
I said earlier, I think I'd really encouraged them to
pursue their own careers, kind of find that self actualization
(26:40):
on their own and not not have the weight of
a brand or family connection ever interfering with how they
feel about themselves and how they're achieving all the dreams
that they want to pursue. Absolutely the dreams they want
to pursue. Especially you talked about creativity early on in
this podcast, and I put a star next to that word,
(27:03):
Like you said, you know you do have a creative side.
You had your own dreams for taking you to Madison Avenue.
How do you fulfill that creative side now? Sure? Well.
The nice thing about my career at Being is I've
always worked in marketing at LLO Being and my last
(27:24):
operational role prior to becoming the chairman was the senior
vice president of Brand at LLO Being, So I had
a lot of great opportunity to express my creative side there,
working with a whole creative team that was responsible for
web content, catalog content, marketing content and advertising, and and
(27:46):
also brand engagement opportunities. And my belief is that when
I mentioned earlier that L Being was a highly analytical company, um,
maybe we as a company with our marketing, was a
bit out of balance. We always had to measure the
r o I on something and if you couldn't measure it,
we wouldn't do it. So you send a catalog out,
(28:06):
it's got this in many orders, and you associated these
conversion rates with that, and we tried to always improve those.
My belief is that we needed more art to go
with the science, and let's inject some brand and make
connections with people that are more powerful. And that's why
we really doubled down on purpose. Let's make connections to
(28:29):
remind people that we're a company that's about connecting people
with the outdoors because we believe in those respentative, restorative
benefits of being outside. And as we've done that through
UM social media marketing. Are our relationships with with other organizations,
whether it's you know, partnerships we've done with research institutes
(28:53):
like Dr Paul piff A, you see Irvine who did
this great study on the benefits of any time outdoors
and how it impacts our connections with people and our
and our feeling of wellness. Bringing those stories to life
and bringing the true meaning of LLL being out there
and connecting with people UM is a great way to
(29:14):
express creativity and and express this brand in a beautiful
way that's not so analytics, and I think we've done
a great job with that. So I continue to focus
on purpose here at LLL, being and that's my big goal,
and I love talking about it, and I think there
are great ways that when I go and I talk
(29:35):
to our creative department about purpose, they fully understand what
we want to do. And when we talk about being
more accessible and and being the outdoor brand for everyone,
you'll now see that in our catalog representation, you'll see it,
and how we're marketing you'll see it, and how we're
um giving its like adaptive outdoors, which help differently able
(30:00):
people experience time outside. They're all wonderful things, but it's
a great way to share creativity. You're passionate about the outdoors.
How is your business adapting to a planet that's heating up?
It's really interesting. Um Our philosophy at LU being is
about getting people outside to enjoy the outdoors right and
(30:24):
to discover that restorative power being outside. If we don't
have an outside to go to, obviously, that's a very
difficult place for us to be. Our thoughts with regard
to the environment are we think that the more people
we can connect to the outdoors, we are creating better
(30:46):
stewards of the outdoors. So again this this idea of
getting people outside too for their own personal wellness benefits
is also super beneficial to that other a coholder of ours,
which is the natural environment, because these people then in
turn become better, better stewards of the environment. And that's
(31:09):
our big push. What about it from a business point
of view? What are you doing to make supply chains
more sustainable? For example? And I mean the truth is
that whenever you're thinking about clothes or shoes apparel, you
know it is a polluting industry. So what are you
(31:30):
doing to make sure that the company is doing it's
a bit to fight climate change to become more sustainable. Yeah, absolutely,
I mean that is a big push. So we've been
focused on this for years and it's we uh, we
don't talk about it as loudly as some of our
competitors might talk about it because we don't think it's
(31:51):
We don't think it's a marketing campaign. We just think
it's the right thing to do. It's it's aligned with
our values. But the outdoors, as one of our one
of our stakeholders, is critical and we've always been working
with vendors and our partners to find better ways of
manufacturing goods, using more recycled goods, using sustainable down using
(32:15):
you know recycled nylon and products, looking at ways that
we can lessen the impact of manufacturing on the environment,
and we've made great strive in addition to what we've
done on the product side, working with our vendors internally,
we have moved to a world where we're down to
about of our waste products um are not impacting the environment.
(32:42):
We are. We're getting to this really low carbon footprint
if you will, and we if you look at our
power usage at ll being, we are getting that from
sustainable sources. So we have moved to a collective of
with the solar company within the state of Maine, and
(33:04):
that's driving about our electrical demand needs. We also have
a chief a sustainability officer at LB, which is really
critical who oversees this and we make sure that we
bring our sustainability updates to our social impact updates that
have happened every quarter at our quarterly meetings of the
board where we get a report art on how well
(33:26):
we're meeting the goals that we've set for ourselves. And
we've been doing this for a long time. I know
that I've never spent as much time outdoors as I
did during the pandemic and I think that's true for
a lot of people around the world. Right we gave
us the opportunity to reconnect with nature. What did the
pandemic do for your business and what are some of
(33:50):
the lessons you learned during the pandemic some of the
learnings that you want to hold on to. Sure, it's
a great question. Um. The pandemic for everyone was just
a game changer. So if you asked me in March
(34:10):
what I was thinking, I was probably thinking of I
wonder what my next career is going to be, because
you know, I really wondered how people were going to
make it through as we're shutting down retail, and how
things would have, you know, how this pandemic would affect
the world. Fairly quickly after, probably by May, we started
(34:34):
seeing some interesting changes. So as people were staying home,
we started seeing sales increases in sleepware and cozy comfortable
are slippers were selling like it was Christmas time. And
it's just because more people were home and they could
do their work in their own environment and didn't need
(34:54):
to dress up. Post May, when people started realizing that, hey,
the best place to be is outside, we started to
see our outdoor goods in gear and more active apparel
and clothing start to sell and it was amazing. I
mean that the numbers were significant, So the spear we
had of of losing sales was was unwarranted, and all
(35:17):
of a sudden, we started seeing that we were well
positioned to fulfill the needs of many of our customers
who were rediscovering the outdoors. And it was a beautiful thing.
And that's carried through So if you look at some
of the Outdoor Industry Association numbers, camping was up thirty
fishing was up almost also double digits, and all these
(35:38):
outdoor activities. People were re engaging and rediscovering the outdoors
and it was wonderful. And that was people just walking
around their neighborhoods. I mean, I don't know about you,
but I I started seeing kids in my neighborhood ride
bikes again and I hadn't seen anyone ride bicycles and years.
There was this really wonderful impact. So there's this beautiful
(35:59):
impact of the endemic where people rediscovered, um the power
of the outside, and I actually think that probably helped
a lot of people deal with some of the anxiety
that the pandemic created. This time outside helped them find balance,
and I think that's why we pushed to look at
the restorative power of being outside. And as we move
(36:19):
into a post pandemic world, I would say that I'm
not sure it's a lesson learned, but it's a lesson
that I want to keep going. Is that we all
is as humans, probably learned that we always intuitively knew
that time outside was good for us. But as things
return to normal, or to kind of a new normal,
(36:41):
as people start moving back to the office, as people
start picking up the pace in their life, I hope
people remember that you need to find that balance. And
if they don't remember, it's our job at l L
being as a company that's all about helping people to
find that restorative power being outside to remind them of it.
(37:04):
So you will see lots of lots of marketing material,
lots of social media kind of touting the benefits of
time outdoors because I want to make sure that people
are spending time outside because it is the right thing
and it's good for us and again makes us better
stewards of the environment. Sean, this podcast is called out
(37:24):
of Office. I think I know the answer to this question,
but I'm going to ask it anyways, what's your favorite
thing to do when you're not in the office. Wow.
I have a lot of really interesting outdoor pursuits which
I'm kept. I'm sure you can imagine, and it changes seasonally,
but I will say that whatever I'm doing outside of
the office, when I do it with friends and family
(37:48):
or my dog, those are always the best things to do.
And whether it's mountain biking or boating or skiing, um,
doing it with friends and family makes it so much
better and helps build these really beautiful connections. Sean, thank
you so much for joining me and out of Office,
thank you so much for having me. That was Sean Gorman,
(38:11):
chairman of l L BEEN on this week's Out of Office.
I hope you enjoyed the chat I did, and I
went out for a walk in Regents Park the very
next morning. He's certainly right about the restorative power of
the outdoors. This episode was produced by Yang Yang. I'm
Alika for Pool. I hope you stay well and managed
to get some time outside. As always, thank you for listening.
Hi, and welcome back to Out of Office. I'm your host,
Malika Kapoor. This week, my guest is someone who believes
in the healing power of the outdoors. Sean Gorman is
a chairman of the company L. L. Bean. He's also
the great grandson of its founder L. L. Being the
man behind this iconic brand that is now over a
(00:23):
hundred years old. I spoke to Sean about carrying forward
his great grandfather's legacy, working in the family business, about
lessons from the pandemic, and being a steward of the environment.
Here's our conversation. Sean, Welcome to Out of Office. Thank
(00:44):
you so much for having me. Sean, where do you
join us today? From where are you? I'm in our
headquarters at L. L. Bean and Report Maine in Maine. Yes, okay, great?
Now LLL. Beam is the founder of your company, but
also your great grandfather. Was there ever a doubt that
you would work at mL being? Oh wow, Yes, there
(01:09):
was certainly a doubt. I never really had any intention
of working in the company. I knew of the company
as I was growing up. Um L was my great grandfather,
but no one really made that strong being connection because
my my last name's Gorman, so l L had two
sons and a daughter. His daughter, Barbara is my grandmother,
(01:32):
who married my grandfather, Jack Gorman, and they had three boys,
one of which is my father and my dad, Jim Gorman,
never worked in the business. He was an engineer and
he worked for Bell Labs down in Massachusetts. So I
grew up in New Hampshire. My last name was Gorman,
and we didn't have a lot of connection to the
(01:54):
Being company. My dad served on the board, but there
wasn't that that really strong connection, and there wasn't any
push from my dad to join the company. He wanted
me to be my own person and do what I
wanted to do. When you joined the company, you joined
at an entry level position, isn't that right? Yeah? I was.
(02:17):
I was at a very entry level position when I
joined the company. Um, I'll tell you a little bit
about how I joined the company. So when so Being,
you know the exposure that I had to allow being
and one of the reasons why I thought it never
was a good fit for me was, um, I was
always kind of exposed at a young age to the
highest level people. So I'd have my uncle, who was
(02:39):
the CEO muh. The different members of the management team,
whether a chief marketing officers that would come and visit
my dad or talk to my dad about the business.
And they were very serious people, and they were doing
wonderful work, and they're great people. But I didn't really
connect to them as much as I thought I might.
(03:00):
And when I thought of l L Being, I thought
of a very focused management company with excellent leaders, most
with Harvard m b A's who UM probably wouldn't connect
real well with me. And so I took a job
initially out of college. I mean, my dream was to
um work on Madison Avenue. I wanted to write copy.
(03:23):
I wanted to kind of fulfill this creative side of mine.
I'm a highly analytic person, but I also have this
really strong need for creativity. But unfortunately, when I graduated
from college in the late eighties, uh, we're in a
recession and Madison av was closing shops and and there
wasn't that opportunity there. So my mother, who had a
(03:46):
recent college graduate who wasn't employed, was pushing me to
get a job. I didn't want to go to l
L Being. So I took a job in a sales position,
and I liked it, but I think what I found
was it wasn't I wasn't really passionate about it. It
was okay, and I actually made decent money, but I
just didn't see that as my future. So I had
(04:09):
two brothers who worked at Being and I talked to
them about how they enjoyed it, and they both loved it,
and they really highly encouraged me to join the company.
So I did. And interestingly, it didn't take too long
in this, even in this entry level role where it
started as an advertising analyst in the advertising department at
all Being, um, but it didn't take me long to
(04:31):
find that the people I was working with and the
company itself was it was something that I was very
passionate about. There was a strong push at ll Being
to inspire and enable people to enjoy the outdoors. That
was our push, that was our purpose. And yeah, I
really loved it. Now, I started at the bottom and
(04:52):
I worked hard, but it was working hard for something
that I truly believed it and I would really like
to work at a company, to work a way up
the ladder, at a company that is actually a family business. Well, um,
it's interesting. My dad didn't discourage me from joining the company.
(05:13):
But he wasn't encouraging me to join the company, and
I may be more towards his position of not encouraging
my children to join the company and to kind of
self actualized on their own and not have something tied
to you that's larger than you, this big brand. I
(05:33):
will tell you that it was great to be a
family member for getting into the business. L O being
was a highly sought after job. A lot of people
wanted to work here, so I had that that easy
in if you will. But once I was here, I
had a lot of eyes on me. So it wasn't
(05:55):
just my supervisor and my manager wondering how I'm performing
or letting me know only performing. I had people in
hr kind of checking in with me and giving giving
reports to my uncle who is the CEO, who was
curious about how the new kid doing. So it was
it was interesting, and I will tell you honestly, sometimes
(06:17):
it's really difficult. Particulars, particularly as I got higher up
with the management and you have perhaps you're a manager
and you're dealing with the director who's a couple of
pay grades above you, but they know that you are
a member of the board I mean I served on
the board, it was an employee, and that fear that
(06:38):
if they gave you bad feedback it might come back
to them was present. So I didn't always get the
best feedback, and I think you know that can slow
ones development. And my favorite bosses were those who who
were really clear and said, I don't really care who
you are. You're you're an employee of mine, and this
is what I expect of you. And that was I
(07:00):
wore two hats at L a being, and I clearly
knew at which time I was wearing what hat. I
always functioned as an employee at LB, never as an owner.
But when I got into the boardroom, that's when I
switched hats, and I tried to keep those those two
roles very distinct. So I want to go back to
the beginning. Um the bean boot, which is of course
(07:21):
one of the most iconic products at your company has
created and continues to endure. Tell us a little bit
about how the bean boot came into being. I know
there's a great story which involves in your father. Yeah,
there is a great story, and you know it's it's
kind of built on our kind of our values. The
(07:43):
story really is what what developed our values? Perseverance as
as the most obvious one in this story. But L
L was an avid outdoorsman. He spent a lot of
time treking around the main woods. But at the age
of forty a key to determine that, he was just
tired of coming home from these trips with cold and
(08:04):
wet feet. So he took, um, you know, the benefits
of a rubber boot which keep your feet really dry, um,
and then the benefits of a leather boot which fit
very well, and combined them by combining that leather upper
to the rubber bottom, and he created the main hunting shoe.
So he took a list of out of state main
(08:24):
license main hunting license holders and sent a brochure to
them touting this this great product and um also expressing
a total satisfaction guarantee. And unfortunately for him, he about
ninety of the first one sold came back because the
(08:46):
leather uppers separated from the rubber bottoms, and it nearly
put him out of business. And this is where perseverance
comes in and integrity and respect um. He was a
man of his word, but he was also determined and
motivated to make sure that his product would function well.
So he borrowed four dollars from his brother. He perfected
(09:10):
the stitching process which we still use today, which is
a triple stitch, and it's it's you'll see it throughout
l being DNA and a lot of our products. And
he re sent out brochures and the rest is history.
And that's where his his famous satisfaction guarantee came into
place as well. Yes, that's again legendary in your company,
(09:30):
isn't it. He's also come up. He came up with
the golden rule, right that to find your company, and
the golden rule is sell good merchandise at a reasonable
profit and treat your customers like human beings. And sometimes
that isn't always a case, right companies treating customers actually
being so bad. What I wanted to ask you is
(09:52):
what makes customer service at LL being different and unique.
I think it's again the values, it's it's our guiding principles,
it's the way we treat people. It's understanding that we're
a company that operates under a stakeholder model. So we
have six stakeholders. We have our employees, our customers, our
(10:17):
community are vendors are shareholders and the natural environment. So
when you think about it, we try to do things
that don't benefit any stakeholder at the expense of another,
and the customers is number one at LLL Being, and
very clearly and very early on, ll had that golden
(10:38):
rule and the end of that golden rule, if you
treat them like human beings, they'll always come back for more.
And that was his push. It was about building relationships
with customers, and it's about treating people honestly and fairly.
That's why his guarantee is so um, so memorable and
so iconic. And he wanted to ensure that anything you
(11:01):
bought for him from him was of high quality and
if it proved otherwise, bring it back. And we stand
by that today. So I think that initial way he
treated people and him expressing that golden rule. And then
when my uncle Leon took over LLL Being in the
mid sixties, ll L really Leon took those rules that
(11:26):
LLL had established and he codified them into our our
guiding principles and our values, and he made sure that
those permeated throughout the company. And my role as a
steward of this company is to ensure that those same
guiding principles. The way we do business is carried on
today and make sure that we shepherd that for future
(11:49):
generations and they understand it. So we have a very
clear guide book, if you will, of how to treat customers,
and it extends throughout the organization. It is really hard
go to LLL Being and find any employee who doesn't
embrace our values and our guiding principles. And one of
the values you had. One of the things that was
unique about your company is this ability to tell your
(12:12):
customers if something goes wrong or you don't like it,
bring it back. And this was available to them for
a lifetime, right they could bring it back any time,
but you changed it to one year recently, so that's correct.
And what we did was we were finding that a
lot of people were taking what LLL stood for and
(12:33):
took it to an extreme where ll LLL guarantee was
a satisfaction guarantee. I guarantee these products to give you
complete satisfaction. We were finding some customers who are bringing
back materials that they never purchased. They went to goodwill
(12:53):
and found L Being products, or they emptied out their
grandfather's you know, closet after repassed and they would bring
all this merchandise back and ask for a return on it.
And oftentimes we'd get customers who were returning a pair
of slippers that was twenty years old, completely worn out.
(13:14):
And to me, that would be the definition of satisfaction
where you're going to find a product so it's your
it's your expectations. So what we did is we had
a lot of customer complaints because people could see the
abuse taking place in our retail stores in lines that
retail stores were with the returning bags of goods and saying,
I know this impacts me because if you're taking all
(13:35):
this back, it's in your pricing that you have to to,
you know, build this in. So we made the change,
which was a very very difficult decision that took a
lot of family input, took a lot of management input,
and took a lot of communication with our customers to
get their input, and we created our satisfaction guarantee still exists.
(13:59):
The difference is you have one year to determine if
you're not satisfied with that product. After the first year,
that product fails for some mechanical defect or something that's
wrong with the product. We will always stand by that product,
and that continues to this day. So you can have
a product that if you expected it to last longer
(14:21):
or something went wrong and broke with it, we will
look at that product to make the decision as to
whether it's a manufacturer's defect and will will actually refund
or replace the product for you. We had overwhelmingly positive
response to this change from customers. I would say that
of the responses we got with regards to our change
(14:43):
in policy were people ecstatic that they no longer had
to witness people abusing our own And I think one
year is very generous for a turnaround time. You know,
normally you get one fourteen days or twenty eight days,
So I think one is fairly fairly general. Is you
talked about how this was a collective decision taken by
the family and also by management. You do have a
(15:06):
president and CEO who's not a family member. How does
that work? What's that relationship? Like? Sure, it works really
really well, so and why was it important to have
somebody who's not a family member. Well, I think what's
important is to find a leader that's best suited to
(15:27):
running the company and one that all family branch members
could aligned behind and when I became the chairman of
the company back in nineteen excuse me, back in two
thousand thirteen, um I was running the company with with
(15:48):
our excuse me, I was the chairman of the company,
with our CEO who had been a long term member
of the Latin company but not a family member. We
had an external CEO prior to our current CEO. As
that gentleman left the company, Chris McCormick, we started a
CEO search and it was actually a wonderful gift for
(16:11):
me because I had my thoughts on the nature of
the business and the culture of LLL being that I
was trying to shift, and I was able as the
person hiring the CEO to work with the family members
and our independent board of directors to determine someone who
best fulfilled those cultural needs of LLL, being it would
(16:33):
be a great cultural fit as long as as well
as having these great technical abilities, which we found in
Steve Smith. When you talk about somebody who would make
a great cultural fit, what's the first thing you're looking for, Well,
it depends on the culture you're looking for. So so
what is the culture that defines a little bit right?
(16:55):
I grew up at an LLL being that was a
very high control culture, analytic culture, and that served us
well through the time when my uncle turned this business
into what it is today, this globally recognized brand. The
culture that I saw that LLL being wanted and the
(17:16):
employees of ll A being wanted and I wanted as
an employee of LLO being was one that was more transparent,
one that was more collaborative, and one that was more empowering.
So I was often doing work without fully understanding why
I was doing the work. So it was like, here's
(17:36):
what you should do. We've made the decision, do it,
and now we do things um in a very different way.
So the culture that I wanted was one with empathy.
I don't think fear is a good motivator. I think
one where we're empowered and we're tapping into that power
of our employee base. I think that UH great saying
(18:00):
that I heard from one of my employees is none
of us is as smart as all of us, meaning
that the collective thinking of a group generally gets much
better outcomes. And understanding that there are multiple types of intelligence.
People come out problems from many different ways, and as
you do that you come up with better solutions and
better outcomes to problems. So we now are functioning in
(18:23):
a very transparent world where we share our strategies. We
develop our strategies with input from the employees, and then
as we move forward with our our vision of being
that leading outdoor brand for everyone, people understand our vision,
they understand our mission, and what's most important is they
understand our purpose. And as they understand our purpose and
(18:45):
know that every decision we make should align with that purpose,
they are then empowered to perform in their roles and
we are seeing fabulous results. Sean, your company is what
a hundred years old? A little over a hundred years old. Yeah,
we just we just celebrated our anniversary in October, ten
years old and the brand is as strong as ever.
(19:11):
How do you stay relevant? I think that the secret
to staying relevant is to stay authentic. So as you
think about l L being as a brand, we are
again we have our purpose, which is to enable and
inspire people to discover the restorative power of being outside.
(19:34):
We want to get people outside because we think it
makes four a better lifestyle. L L talked about how
time outdoors added quantity and quality to his life. He's
got a great quote that said hunting and fishing was
the big lure that took me to the great outdoors
and away from the mean and petty things in life.
(19:56):
I think that's a wonderful quote. My uncle Lean talked
about the physical and spiritual benefits of spending time outside.
So that's purpose is alive and well, and everything we
do is fulfilling for that purpose, from the services we
provide to the way we treat people, the way we
give to charitable to ensure that we have accessibility for
(20:17):
everyone to participate in the outside and in the products
that we sell, and we stay true to that so
that authenticity is there. And I think if we started
moving down paths where we were chasing fashion or chasing trends,
or doing something that was out of character with who
we are, customers wouldn't accept that. Fortunately, we haven't done that,
(20:39):
and I think that's the piece of staying relevant. It's
staying authentic and knowing that you might be really hot
one day and you might not be so hot the
next day. But if you stay consistent and you stay
true to yourselves, your customer will know what to expect
from you. I want to take you back. I think
it was when you both when you gave the commencement
(21:01):
address at your alma mater, the University of New Hampshire,
and you spoke to the graduating class, and after a
very funny first story about how you overslept at your
own graduation and barely made it, you talked about life
lessons right, and you talked about these three small but
powerful words, and you said they've really helped you live
(21:23):
in adventurous and fulfilling life. And these words are outdoors,
which I understand values that you've spoken about. And balance.
What do you mean by balance and why did you
pick that word? Or um? It's interesting and I discovered
this UM while I was at LLLB. So balances is
(21:48):
when I referred to balance, I mean balance in one's life,
making sure you're balancing your work life with your family
life and your personal self and ensuring that you're treating
all of these equitably. And I will tell you that
I got out of balance UM at LL being out
(22:09):
of the gate, I had a real strong desire to achieve.
I was highly focused on my job and I spent
a lot of time and energy focused on UM achieving
more and graduating to different levels of responsibility within the company.
(22:29):
What can happen There is a couple of things. You
can lose the focus on family. And it's not like
I wasn't focused on family and wonderful family, um, but
there are things that I may have missed or things
that I might have regretted not doing with my children
more because I was putting my career first, and ultimately
(22:54):
I think that was for them so that I could
achieve things and provide for them things that I wanted
them to have, whether it was trips or gifts or whatever.
But in reality, they probably just wanted time with their
dad and and I think, um, after my children were born,
(23:17):
there were probably some spots where that wasn't wasn't happening
as much as it should and that led to some
personal imbalance of why am I not as satisfied in
life as I as I probably should be, and why
am I not as happy as I should be? And
interestingly enough, um, it was probably a family vacation that
(23:42):
helped me figure that out. And it was a family
vacation outdoors to a national park where we were, um
just struck by this beauty of this wonderful place. The
connections that I was making with my children were really powerful,
and the most beautiful thing was we were all off
(24:06):
of our devices. We were just present and enjoying each
other in these moments. And that's where the outdoors comes in,
because the outdoors is where I find my balance. If
I find myself in this hyper competitive, hyper stressed world
starting to race, I like to go outside and actually
see nature going about its business and understanding that there
(24:29):
is a natural order and a natural paste of things.
That's very calming and very satisfying. And when I can
spend time outdoors with my friends and family, what better
way to make connections. Yeah, it is, yes, absolutely. How
old are your children? I have a son who's twenty
(24:51):
five years old, and I have twin daughters who are
twenty two and are any of them going to join
the family business. That is to be determined right now.
I have two daughters who they just graduated from Loyal
and Merrimount in Los Angeles, and they are currently living
(25:12):
in Los Angeles pursuing writing careers. Oddly enough, all of
my children are English majors, just like their dads. Yeah
so um, but they are again wildly um intelligent and
creative and really good human beings, all of them. The
(25:32):
girls are are currently writing for a couple of publications
out there, which is great that they're both pursuing um
uh careers and acting. They went to a film school
with with that that hope they have landed as I'm
proud to say a couple of different parts, and that
has been fun to watch. And my my son lives
(25:54):
here in Maine and he's pursuing a career and as
a as an organic farmer. Just really kind of fun
to watch, and I'm not sure what his future holds,
but he is UM. He's done internships at l L
being working in our outdoor discovery schools and also UM
in our I T departments. He was he was a
(26:16):
computer science major at Wake Forest before he changed over
to to an English major, and so he's he spent
some time in I T and he enjoys that. So
it's here for them should they want it. But as
I said earlier, I think I'd really encouraged them to
pursue their own careers, kind of find that self actualization
(26:40):
on their own and not not have the weight of
a brand or family connection ever interfering with how they
feel about themselves and how they're achieving all the dreams
that they want to pursue. Absolutely the dreams they want
to pursue. Especially you talked about creativity early on in
this podcast, and I put a star next to that word,
(27:03):
Like you said, you know you do have a creative side.
You had your own dreams for taking you to Madison Avenue.
How do you fulfill that creative side now? Sure? Well.
The nice thing about my career at Being is I've
always worked in marketing at LLO Being and my last
(27:24):
operational role prior to becoming the chairman was the senior
vice president of Brand at LLO Being, So I had
a lot of great opportunity to express my creative side there,
working with a whole creative team that was responsible for
web content, catalog content, marketing content and advertising, and and
(27:46):
also brand engagement opportunities. And my belief is that when
I mentioned earlier that L Being was a highly analytical company, um,
maybe we as a company with our marketing, was a
bit out of balance. We always had to measure the
r o I on something and if you couldn't measure it,
we wouldn't do it. So you send a catalog out,
(28:06):
it's got this in many orders, and you associated these
conversion rates with that, and we tried to always improve those.
My belief is that we needed more art to go
with the science, and let's inject some brand and make
connections with people that are more powerful. And that's why
we really doubled down on purpose. Let's make connections to
(28:29):
remind people that we're a company that's about connecting people
with the outdoors because we believe in those respentative, restorative
benefits of being outside. And as we've done that through
UM social media marketing. Are our relationships with with other organizations,
whether it's you know, partnerships we've done with research institutes
(28:53):
like Dr Paul piff A, you see Irvine who did
this great study on the benefits of any time outdoors
and how it impacts our connections with people and our
and our feeling of wellness. Bringing those stories to life
and bringing the true meaning of LLL being out there
and connecting with people UM is a great way to
(29:14):
express creativity and and express this brand in a beautiful
way that's not so analytics, and I think we've done
a great job with that. So I continue to focus
on purpose here at LLL, being and that's my big goal,
and I love talking about it, and I think there
are great ways that when I go and I talk
(29:35):
to our creative department about purpose, they fully understand what
we want to do. And when we talk about being
more accessible and and being the outdoor brand for everyone,
you'll now see that in our catalog representation, you'll see it,
and how we're marketing you'll see it, and how we're
um giving its like adaptive outdoors, which help differently able
(30:00):
people experience time outside. They're all wonderful things, but it's
a great way to share creativity. You're passionate about the outdoors.
How is your business adapting to a planet that's heating up?
It's really interesting. Um Our philosophy at LU being is
about getting people outside to enjoy the outdoors right and
(30:24):
to discover that restorative power being outside. If we don't
have an outside to go to, obviously, that's a very
difficult place for us to be. Our thoughts with regard
to the environment are we think that the more people
we can connect to the outdoors, we are creating better
(30:46):
stewards of the outdoors. So again this this idea of
getting people outside too for their own personal wellness benefits
is also super beneficial to that other a coholder of ours,
which is the natural environment, because these people then in
turn become better, better stewards of the environment. And that's
(31:09):
our big push. What about it from a business point
of view? What are you doing to make supply chains
more sustainable? For example? And I mean the truth is
that whenever you're thinking about clothes or shoes apparel, you
know it is a polluting industry. So what are you
(31:30):
doing to make sure that the company is doing it's
a bit to fight climate change to become more sustainable. Yeah, absolutely,
I mean that is a big push. So we've been
focused on this for years and it's we uh, we
don't talk about it as loudly as some of our
competitors might talk about it because we don't think it's
(31:51):
We don't think it's a marketing campaign. We just think
it's the right thing to do. It's it's aligned with
our values. But the outdoors, as one of our one
of our stakeholders, is critical and we've always been working
with vendors and our partners to find better ways of
manufacturing goods, using more recycled goods, using sustainable down using
(32:15):
you know recycled nylon and products, looking at ways that
we can lessen the impact of manufacturing on the environment,
and we've made great strive in addition to what we've
done on the product side, working with our vendors internally,
we have moved to a world where we're down to
about of our waste products um are not impacting the environment.
(32:42):
We are. We're getting to this really low carbon footprint
if you will, and we if you look at our
power usage at ll being, we are getting that from
sustainable sources. So we have moved to a collective of
with the solar company within the state of Maine, and
(33:04):
that's driving about our electrical demand needs. We also have
a chief a sustainability officer at LB, which is really
critical who oversees this and we make sure that we
bring our sustainability updates to our social impact updates that
have happened every quarter at our quarterly meetings of the
board where we get a report art on how well
(33:26):
we're meeting the goals that we've set for ourselves. And
we've been doing this for a long time. I know
that I've never spent as much time outdoors as I
did during the pandemic and I think that's true for
a lot of people around the world. Right we gave
us the opportunity to reconnect with nature. What did the
pandemic do for your business and what are some of
(33:50):
the lessons you learned during the pandemic some of the
learnings that you want to hold on to. Sure, it's
a great question. Um. The pandemic for everyone was just
a game changer. So if you asked me in March
(34:10):
what I was thinking, I was probably thinking of I
wonder what my next career is going to be, because
you know, I really wondered how people were going to
make it through as we're shutting down retail, and how
things would have, you know, how this pandemic would affect
the world. Fairly quickly after, probably by May, we started
(34:34):
seeing some interesting changes. So as people were staying home,
we started seeing sales increases in sleepware and cozy comfortable
are slippers were selling like it was Christmas time. And
it's just because more people were home and they could
do their work in their own environment and didn't need
(34:54):
to dress up. Post May, when people started realizing that, hey,
the best place to be is outside, we started to
see our outdoor goods in gear and more active apparel
and clothing start to sell and it was amazing. I
mean that the numbers were significant, So the spear we
had of of losing sales was was unwarranted, and all
(35:17):
of a sudden, we started seeing that we were well
positioned to fulfill the needs of many of our customers
who were rediscovering the outdoors. And it was a beautiful thing.
And that's carried through So if you look at some
of the Outdoor Industry Association numbers, camping was up thirty
fishing was up almost also double digits, and all these
(35:38):
outdoor activities. People were re engaging and rediscovering the outdoors
and it was wonderful. And that was people just walking
around their neighborhoods. I mean, I don't know about you,
but I I started seeing kids in my neighborhood ride
bikes again and I hadn't seen anyone ride bicycles and years.
There was this really wonderful impact. So there's this beautiful
(35:59):
impact of the endemic where people rediscovered, um the power
of the outside, and I actually think that probably helped
a lot of people deal with some of the anxiety
that the pandemic created. This time outside helped them find balance,
and I think that's why we pushed to look at
the restorative power of being outside. And as we move
(36:19):
into a post pandemic world, I would say that I'm
not sure it's a lesson learned, but it's a lesson
that I want to keep going. Is that we all
is as humans, probably learned that we always intuitively knew
that time outside was good for us. But as things
return to normal, or to kind of a new normal,
(36:41):
as people start moving back to the office, as people
start picking up the pace in their life, I hope
people remember that you need to find that balance. And
if they don't remember, it's our job at l L
being as a company that's all about helping people to
find that restorative power being outside to remind them of it.
(37:04):
So you will see lots of lots of marketing material,
lots of social media kind of touting the benefits of
time outdoors because I want to make sure that people
are spending time outside because it is the right thing
and it's good for us and again makes us better
stewards of the environment. Sean, this podcast is called out
(37:24):
of Office. I think I know the answer to this question,
but I'm going to ask it anyways, what's your favorite
thing to do when you're not in the office. Wow.
I have a lot of really interesting outdoor pursuits which
I'm kept. I'm sure you can imagine, and it changes seasonally,
but I will say that whatever I'm doing outside of
the office, when I do it with friends and family
(37:48):
or my dog, those are always the best things to do.
And whether it's mountain biking or boating or skiing, um,
doing it with friends and family makes it so much
better and helps build these really beautiful connections. Sean, thank
you so much for joining me and out of Office,
thank you so much for having me. That was Sean Gorman,
(38:11):
chairman of l L BEEN on this week's Out of Office.
I hope you enjoyed the chat I did, and I
went out for a walk in Regents Park the very
next morning. He's certainly right about the restorative power of
the outdoors. This episode was produced by Yang Yang. I'm
Alika for Pool. I hope you stay well and managed
to get some time outside. As always, thank you for listening.
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