My take, on going into the gun room at Bean's main store in Freeport, is that they are more selling lifestyle, even there. You'll hear stories that they get grief pretty frequently from some customers along the lines of "what are all those stuffed animals doing here?".
The sxs guns Beans has on the wall are Merkels and Spanish guns. Those are the brands lifestyle customers know.
Good point - but at least the Maine LL Bean store has a hunting/gun section. The others have de-emphasized hunting and shooting and there's a large LL Bean in an affluent part of NH that has no vestige of anything relating to hunting.
This is, I believe, because of the demographics of their new customer base. I see a lot of LL Bean clothing on the Upper West Side worn by people who would get lost if they were between two trees.
On the other hand, Orvis' New York store on Fifth & 44th has recently put in a lot of hunting gear - real shooting jackets, cartridge belts, speed bags and the like. They are again marketing themselves as hunting-orientated. I find this a very refreshing change to the NY scene!
I do owe the Freeport Bean gunroom a big one, however. A few years ago some friends and I spent a day at their "wingshooting" clinic (a complete and total waste of time - crappy instructors and no emphasis on wingshooting) but I did, for the first time, handle a Merkel 1620. I would have bought it right on the spot but the gunroom guy was such a dork that I didn't and got one a couple weeks later for 1K less.
Lifestyle marketing is big - can't blame them if they want to make money.
