International Bean
Outdoor lifestyle retailer L.L. Bean opened a new retail store in Japan as part of the Freeport, Maine–based catalog and bricks-and-mortar company’s international expansion efforts. The company recently opened a store in the new Diamond City Mall in Tokyo suburb Musashimurayama. Another is set to open next month in Osaka suburb Yao. By the end of the year, L.L. Bean will have 15 stores in Japan, and the company plans to open four more by spring 2007. The company is actively looking for retail opportunities across Asia, as well as in Latin America and Canada, according to Zane Shatzer, the company’s general manager of international new market development. In the past three years, L.L. Bean has seen its Canadian sales increase 30 percent annually.
