L.L. Bean:

It’s retailer’s first location in state

L.L. Bean opens its first Wisconsin store, the latest in a string of prominent national retailers to finally land in the Milwaukee area.

TOWN OF BROOKFIELD - Bring on the oxford cloth, the chamois shirts, the woodsy plaids equally at home on the trail or at a family reunion on Narragansett Bay.

Bring on those rubbersole, leather-upper boots that have become a retro hit on college campuses. Bring on L.L. Bean. The latest in a string of prominent national retailers to finally land in the Milwaukee area (think Nordstrom, The Container Store and soon, IKEA), century-old Maine merchant L.L. Bean has opened its first Wisconsin store.

“We love this location,” Ken Kacere, senior vice president of retail for Bean, said Thursday, sitting in the new shop’s section of rugged footwear. “We’ve been looking for a place in Wisconsin for a long time. Been waiting for the right location, the right spot.”

They found what they wanted at The Corners of Brookfield, the still-developing retail and residential complex near Barker and Blue Mound roads, where Bean’s presence adds to a growing array of shopping attractions anchored by a Von Maur department store.

Bean already has a large following in the Milwaukee area through its website and catalog business, Kacere said, “so we knew it would be a good market for us.”

Kacere was here Thursday to show off the Brookfield store, which will hold its grand opening Friday. The shop opened for business on

June 19.

Primarily a direct retailer — online and catalog account for 80% of Bean’s sales — the company in recent years has been adding physical stores and expanding beyond its Northeastern base.

Bean now has 32 fullline stores outside Maine, along with 10 outlets, and is opening about five new stores a year, Kacere said.

That’s one more piece of evidence indicating that, while some traditional retailers are indeed struggling amid rising online competition, alarm about a “retail apocalypse” is overblown, industry analyst Paula Rosenblum said.

“The truth is that stores are generally more profitable than e-commerce sites,” Rosenblum, managing partner at Retail Systems Research and a former retail technology executive, said by email. “While L.L. Bean has been in the direct-toconsumer business for years, and knows how to manage it, the lure of lower apparel return rates and customer engagement in a store is pushing them to open stores.”

What’s more, said John Rabenhorst, a principal in the retail practice of consulting firm A.T. Kearney, commercial real-estate prices have been attractive lately, and brick-andmortar holds some inherent advantages over the digital world.

“Communicating the brand image and value online is typically very, very difficult to do, Rabenhorst said. “Touching and feeling the product is always the best. Ninety percent of all retail is occurring at a physical store, and we don’t expect that to change in the future.”

Besides selling merchandise, Bean stores house the company’s Outdoor Discovery Schools, which hold demonstrations and clinics.

The Brookfield Bean covers about 15,000 square feet, with men’s clothing on one side, women’s on the other and outdoor gear in the middle. Overall, it looks something like an REI store, but with more clothing and less gear.

Kacere said Bean’s mix — about 75% clothing and footwear, 25% equipment — is roughly the reverse of REI’s.