Two L.L.Bean execs launch new endeavors
Photo/Rebecca Goldfine
Jim Hauptman will leave L.L.Bean in December to launch a product design and marketing firm
Two L.L.Bean executives -- one in marketing and design and the other in outdoor education -- have left the Freeport company to launch new businesses.
Jim Hauptman is starting Blaze, a product design and marketing consulting firm in Portland. John Connelly has founded Portland-based Adventurous Joe Coffee, a coffee company for the outdoorsy set.
Hauptman's wrapping up 10 years at Bean in December and has been reaching out to potential clients. "I've always done my own thing, and the entrepreneurial spirit started calling again," Hauptman says. "I feel like I've developed an interesting tool kit of skills."
Hauptman stresses his new company won't be an ad agency -- he's already done that. He founded a small ad agency, Hauptman and Partners, in Portland in 1990, which he sold in 2001 to McClain Marketing. One of his clients then was L.L.Bean, which led to his job there as the retail store's creative director. He oversaw the company catalog, website, copy and photography for six years. "I took the plunge into corporate American," Hauptman says, "although it wasn't quite Wall Street."
Four years ago, he jumped over to product design, leading a team of designers as they developed winter coats, slippers, tents, Madras shorts -- pretty much everything L.L.Bean produces. Hauptman says the two positions gave him perspective on what it takes, from start to finish, to make and sell a product. "You always keep in mind what is the consumer going to buy, and how is the copywriter going to sell it?" he says.
He says it's not uncommon for companies to have a disconnect between their product development and marketing strategy, and that Blaze will bridge these two processes for clients. "You want to think companies work like this but they don't," he says. "They work in silos." Blaze will be targeting the outdoor, sporting and apparel industries.
Meanwhile, Connelly has moved in a somewhat different direction from his work at L.L.Bean, although he's staying within the same market niche. In September he launched an organic, fair-trade coffee company that he's marketing as the brew for adventurous types, or people who just admire that lifestyle. "Almost every adventure is fueled with a cup of joe in the morning," Connelly says. "To be out in the middle of nowhere and have a great cup of coffee is epic, but it's such a simple pleasure."
Connelly, like Hauptman, had been with L.L.Bean for a decade, developing its Outdoor Discovery program. He says he expanded it from two locations with 5,000 annual participants to 11 states with 26,000 yearly participants. "Mission accomplished," he says, in response to why he left. "My entrepreneurial juices were flowing; I wanted to do something of my own."
Prior to L.L.Bean, Connelly founded and ran a whitewater rafting and sea kayaking company for 19 years. He sold the company in 1996.
Adventurous Joe Coffee is sold in resealable 1-pound bags for around $15, decorated with photographs of people rafting down rapids, hiking through canyons and riding horses. The company also sells gear to make a cup of coffee in the wilderness, including a small grinder and collapsible drip cup. "We sell everything you'll need for an epic cup of coffee, whether you're hanging off El Capitan or in your townhouse," Connelly says.
Connelly is also offering adventure trips to the countries where his company purchases the beans. One eight-day trips to Costa Rica listed on his website offers a "multi-sport and coffee-bean farm adventure," for $1,950 per person. "We'll have awesome coffee every day on the trip," Connelly says.
He says he's attracting customers across the country by "putting himself in front of" adventure travel companies and outfitters and resorts, and is on track to exceed his sales goals -- which he didn't specify -- by 5% to 10% at the end of year one. He hopes in the next 18 to 24 months to open a retail outlet in Maine.
Most Recent
Most Recent
Comments