The retailer that brought students Bean boots is setting up shop on campus this week.
L.L. Bean will be hosting a pop-up store in University Yard Monday and Tuesday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. The apparel company, which hails from Maine, spent the past three months traveling to college campuses up and down the East Coast selling a selection of outdoor apparel the store is famous for.
The goods are displayed in a large trailer and various tents that serve as a makeshift store for the outdoor retailer. Customers are assisted by sales employees and invited to try on fleece jackets and gloves in a mirror inside the trailer, or quickly shop while passing by on their way to class.
The pop-up shop offers outerwear, flannel shirts and the brand’s famous Bean boots ahead of the winter season. All products sold at the store will be discounted by 20 percent – a deal Lindsey Brooks, an experiential marketing specialist for L.L.Bean, said is extremely rare to find.
Brooks said the company began hosting pop-up stores last year alongside other marketing initiatives like driving around in a giant “Bootmobile” that looks like the brand’s namesake leather, winter boot.
“We have been going to college campuses just to introduce L.L.Bean to younger customers,” Brooks said. “When you’re getting out of college, that’s when you’re starting to decide what you want to do with your life and brands that you’d like to support.”
L.L. Bean has a storefront in the Tysons Corner mall and recently expanded its presence in the D.C. region with another location in Bethesda, Md. last year.