If you’ve seen a social media ad screaming “L.L.Bean is closing — 90% off everything,” you’re not alone. Those posts have circulated widely, and a few real store closures have made the rumor feel more believable. But the actual business picture looks very different from what those ads suggest.
This article covers what the financials actually show, why certain stores have closed, what triggered some well-known temporary shutdowns, and how to spot scams that are exploiting the confusion.
L.L.Bean Is Not Going Out of Business
Let’s get straight to the point: L.L.Bean has not filed for bankruptcy. There is no company-wide shutdown. No credible source — not a financial regulator, not a major news outlet, not the company itself — supports either claim.
TheStreet covered L.L.Bean’s 2024 layoffs and store closures and explicitly noted that the company has not filed for bankruptcy. L.L.Bean is over 110 years old, remains privately held, and continues to operate stores, factories, and a large e-commerce business.
The rumors are noise. The underlying business is not in collapse.
What L.L.Bean’s Recent Revenue Actually Shows
Instead of guessing, look at the numbers. L.L.Bean reported $1.7 billion in net revenue for 2023. That was the third-highest annual revenue in the company’s entire history. The year before, in 2022, the company posted $1.8 billion — driven by omnichannel investment, better inventory management, and expansion into new product categories.
In 2023, roughly 5,600 employees received a 9% performance bonus — split between 5% in cash and 4% deposited into their 401(k) accounts. The company also donated $5.7 million to outdoor and community nonprofits that same year.
These are not the numbers of a company approaching collapse. Companies on the edge of failure don’t hand out nine-figure revenues, bonus thousands of employees, and cut seven-figure checks to nonprofits.
Why Certain Stores Have Closed
Here’s where things get genuinely confusing — and where the rumors find their footing. Yes, some L.L.Bean stores have closed. But closing individual locations is a normal part of running a retail chain. It doesn’t mean the company is failing.
The New Haven, Connecticut store on Broadway closed on February 11, 2024, after five years of operation. No clearance sale was held. Customers were simply directed to other Connecticut locations in South Windsor and Danbury. The store opened in 2018 and ran its course.
L.L.Bean has also exited some outlet locations, including a Tanger Outlets store. A company spokesperson described one such closure as “a purely business decision” — not a sign of poor performance or financial trouble. Lease terms, foot traffic, and geography drive these calls, the same way they do for any mature retailer managing a portfolio of locations.
Closing one store while keeping others open — or opening new ones — is standard retail management. It becomes a problem only if you look at a single closure in isolation and ignore everything else happening at the company.
Temporary Closures That Sparked Lasting Rumors
Two specific events have been repeatedly misread as signs of business failure. Both deserve a clear explanation.
The COVID-19 Shutdown (March 2020)
In March 2020, L.L.Bean closed every retail store it operated, including the famous Freeport flagship in Maine. That flagship had been open 24 hours a day for decades — so closing it made headlines. Employees continued to receive pay and benefits throughout the closure. Stores later reopened.
This was a pandemic safety response, not a financial decision. But “L.L.Bean closed all its stores” is the kind of fact that sticks in people’s memories, sometimes without the context of why.
The Maine Mass Shooting Response (October 2023)
In October 2023, following a mass shooting in Lewiston, Maine, L.L.Bean temporarily closed its headquarters, retail stores, and factories as a safety precaution. Again, this had nothing to do with the company’s finances. It was a short-term response to a local emergency.
Both events are worth mentioning because they keep getting recycled in online discussions as supposed evidence of instability. They aren’t. They’re documented, explainable, and entirely separate from the company’s business health.
What L.L.Bean Is Actually Building Toward
The clearest sign that L.L.Bean isn’t going anywhere is what it’s actively building. The company has plans to open two to four new 15,000-square-foot stores per year. New locations in Massachusetts and Quebec are part of that pipeline. The company is also expanding into French-language e-commerce to serve Canadian customers more directly.
On the wholesale side, L.L.Bean has added Dillard’s and Moosejaw as new retail partners. This matters because wholesale expansion typically signals that a brand is trying to grow its reach — not retreat from it.
The company’s stated approach is direct-to-consumer first, with catalogs, e-commerce, physical stores, international locations (including Japan and Canada), and wholesale all working together. That’s not a business pulling back. That’s a business trying to grow in multiple directions at once.
The End of Mail Orders — and Why It Doesn’t Mean What People Think
One change that spooked some longtime customers: as of February 2024, L.L.Bean reportedly discontinued mail orders placed via physical paper forms. Orders now go through the website or by phone.
For people who’ve been shopping with L.L.Bean since the catalog era, this feels like a big deal. But it’s an operational shift in how orders are processed — not a sign that the company is abandoning its core identity. The brand still sends catalogs. It’s just channeling actual purchases through digital and phone systems instead of mailed-in forms.
This is the kind of modernization that retailers across every category have been making for years. Treating it as evidence of decline misreads what’s actually happening.
What About the Layoffs?
TheStreet reported on two rounds of layoffs at L.L.Bean in 2024, along with the closure of certain divisions. That’s worth acknowledging honestly. Layoffs are disruptive, and they affect real people.
But layoffs at a company posting $1.7 billion in revenue and actively opening new stores look very different from layoffs at a company burning through cash. Restructuring in a mature business often means shifting resources from slower-growing areas to higher-priority ones — not a signal that everything is falling apart.
If you’re tracking a business’s health, look at the full picture: revenue trajectory, expansion activity, employee compensation, and capital allocation. On all of those measures, L.L.Bean’s story in 2022–2024 reads as a company adjusting, not collapsing.
Watch Out for Scams Using L.L.Bean’s Name
The “L.L.Bean is going out of business — 90% off” ads circulating on Facebook and other platforms are not real. Users on Reddit’s L.L.Bean community have done the basic fact-checking: no official company announcement, no press release, no credible news report supports a company-wide closure or liquidation sale.
What does exist are fraudulent sites and ads exploiting the company’s well-known brand to drive clicks or collect payment information. If you see one of these promotions, don’t click through. Go directly to LLBean.com or search for recent official press releases.
Scammers often attach themselves to large legacy brands precisely because those brands have built-in trust. The confusion around store closures and the 2020 shutdown gives them just enough ambiguity to work with. Don’t let it work on you.
For more business analysis and retail news grounded in real data, visit RapidBizMag.
The Bottom Line
L.L.Bean is not going out of business. It has not filed for bankruptcy. It is not running a liquidation sale. Individual store closures, a shift in how orders are placed, and a couple of highly publicized emergency shutdowns have all been misread — sometimes honestly, sometimes deliberately — as signs of a company in trouble.
The financials say otherwise. $1.7 billion in 2023 revenue, new store openings, expanded wholesale partnerships, and thousands of employees receiving performance bonuses don’t add up to a business on its last legs.
If your local store has closed or is closing, that’s genuinely inconvenient. But it reflects a location-level business decision, not the end of a 110-year-old company. L.L.Bean is still here, still expanding, and still filling orders.
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