LL Bean Closing Lone Western Storefront

BEND, OR-LL Bean will close its 17,000-sf liquidation store here at the end of March. It is the Freeport, ME-based outdoor clothing retailer’s only storefront not located on the East Coast. Company spokeswoman Mary Rose McKinnon tells GlobeSt.com the decision was made in an effort to increase the efficiency of Bean’s liquidation operations.

LL Bean, which derives most of its revenue from catalog sales, opened the factory outlet liquidation store here in 1998. It is now one of 21 LL Bean storefronts, five of which are first line retail stores and 16 of which are liquidation stores for out-of-season product. All the other storefronts are in the East Coast states of Maine, Delaware, Maryland, New Hampshire, New Jersey and Virginia. With its focus clearly on the Mid-Atlantic states, Bean has found it difficult to support one store in Oregon, says McKinnon.

McKinnon tells GlobeSt.com she isn’t sure whether the store’s closure coincides with the end of the company’s lease term. The store is located in Prime Outlets, a mall owned by Prime Retail, a Baltimore-based REIT. Ron Audette, senior general manager of the Bend property, did not return a phone call seeking comment.