L.L. Bean Pop-Up Shop On Campus

The L.L. Bean pop-up shop was a surprise to many students at St. Lawrence University. On Oct. 26 the L.L. Bean boot could be seen in the campus center. With a shop adjacent to the boot-mobile, they were parked right outside of the Sullivan Student Center.  

Abby Williams, a junior at St. Lawrence was able to attend the pop-up shop. When asked if the store was a big deal for campus Williams said “Yes, there are not many places around that allow me to shop in person for the things that I got there.” Williams felt that the store was a great opportunity to get something in person rather than online.  

Williams was really influenced by other students to go to the store. “I did not hear anything from the administration about it. I thought the students posting about it really spread the word throughout campus” said Williams. She felt that the students’ posts were influential in her going to the shop.  

 William’s felt as if the students were being used since the school did not say anything about the shop. “I think the school relied on us to get the word out about the shop,” said Williams. She thought that this was unfair of the school to put that responsibility on the students.  

Lexi Bracco another St. Lawrence student had similar feelings about the shop. “I thought it was the best thing,” Bracco said, “I love little things like that on campus and it was exciting.”  Bracco attended the shop and thought it was great that they were on campus.  

Bracco had the same feelings as Williams in that the students were the ones who promoted the shop. “I did not hear anything from the administration about it,” Bracco had looked for emails about the shop but could not find any. Bracco also added, “I thought the students posting about it really spread the word throughout campus.”  

Bracco did enjoy the store although the administration had not given any details about it and would want another shop to come to campus. “Every time someone comes it should be a different store,” suggested Bracco.  

John O’Connor the Assistant Dean of Student Life at St. Lawrence talked about why the shop was not widely advertised by the school. “We did not finalize the details; it is a nationwide tour that the adventure store does with the bean boot every year,” said O’Connor. This made it hard to get an exact date for the store to come. 

O’Connor had been in contact with bean and the organization that plans the tour. They had talked about potential dates and if they could make it. This date was only confirmed about a week in advance.  

Once the date was finalized O’Connor said, “L.L. Bean did some of their own marketing, they did a promoted event on Facebook, and we put it on our student engagement platform Prescence.” 

The shop was intended to be a fun surprise to campus, something that students found for themselves. O’Connor has been at St. Lawrence since 2015 and this is the first time, he has seen the store on campus. “It was an interesting opportunity we thought students would enjoy” O’Connor added.  

The school did not do a lot of premarketing for the shop and it was believed that the students would spread the word well. “Despite the rain, they had a line at the register all day from 10am to 5pm” O’Connor said, “there was not ever a time that there was not someone waiting.” This showed how the word of mouth really helped market the store throughout campus.  

The school did not purposely leave the marketing up to the students. They wanted it to be a surprise for students but combined with the last-minute date solidification there was not much time left to market.