Bean free shipping may get the boot

Feb. 10--Iconic Maine retailer L.L. Bean said its generous return policy and free shipping could soon be history as it grasps for ways to free up cash and boost growth after years of flat sales.

The Freeport-based outdoors company, which offered an early retirement plan and pension freeze yesterday, said any changes to its return policy and across-the-board free shipping will come later this year.

The retailer's famously liberal return policy states "if something's not working or fitting or standing up to its task to lasting as long as you think it should, we'll take it back."

L.L. Bean executives hope to soften the blow from the pension freeze by expanding its 401(k) plan and boosting contributions. The company wants to see 500 people take the early retirement deal, which would cut its workforce by 10 percent. The retailer is looking at adding more flexible time off, paid parental leave and paid elder-care support, according to CEO Steve Smith.

L.L. Bean said it employs 5,000 people and had $1.6 billion in sales in 2015. Smith said his goal is to return to the strong growth the company saw in the 1980s and '90s.

"As long as your expenses are growing faster than your sales, then you're not able to invest in growth," Smith said. "What we're focused on is getting to where we're back in growth mode."

The changes were in the works before Smith's arrival as CEO last year and the boycott demands that were prompted by news of board member Linda Bean's campaign donations to a Donald Trump political action committee.

Chairman Shawn Gorman, great-grandson of founder Leon Leonwood Bean, said the moves have "weighed heavily" on the family-owned business, but they are necessary to survive.

"The move is designed to get us to a more competitive and modern benefits package that allowed us to be sustainable for the foreseeable future," Gorman said. "Without a healthy core business, it's really hard to satisfy any of the stakeholders."

The pension move is no surprise in a challenging retail environment. L.L. Bean's sales were flat in 2015, and growth for the five years before that was slow.

Nationwide, the private sector has been eliminating pensions. In 2015, about one-fifth of Fortune 500 companies offered a traditional or hybrid defined benefit plan to new hires, down from 60 percent in 1998, according to business consulting firm Willis Towers Watson.

Herald wire services contributed to this report.

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