Lands' End History
Earlier company descriptions, brand line-ups, store counts and photographs from the history of Lands' End, kept for historical reference.
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The Company Description of Its Time
Lands' End files itself as a direct merchant of traditionally styled clothing for the family, soft luggage and products for the home, offering products through its catalogs, on the internet and in its inlet stores, with the goal of pleasing customers with the highest levels of quality and service in the industry, along with an unequivocal ironclad guarantee. The founding story is told in the company's own voice. Back in 1963 Lands' End started in a basement along the river in Chicago's old tannery district; the founders were all sailors at the time, and the business was selling - and sometimes making - racing sailboat equipment, duffle bags, rainsuits, some sweaters and other clothing. A sailing chandlery that drifted into apparel is the origin the whole catalog empire kept.
A Family of Catalogs, and an Early Web Pioneer
The catalog list in the historical record maps the whole customer. The primary Lands' End Catalog carries classically styled casual clothing for men and women including outerwear, swimwear and footwear; separate titles cover Women's Plus Size in sizes 16W-26W, a Men's title from suits and dress shirts to polos, sweaters and jeans, Kids from newborns to pre-teens, School Uniforms and dress-code clothing including logo-embroidered Spiritwear, Home products, and Business Outfitters, whose corporate sales operation embroiders company logos on selected clothing and dresses everyone from the smallest groups to the world's largest businesses. One merchant, seven front doors, each door a different member or moment of the same household.
Lands' End was an early adopter of the internet, launching its website in 1995 with 100 products plus stories, essays and travelogues; the filing then lists innovations that were genuinely novel for apparel retail: My Virtual Model, which the company was the first apparel retailer to offer, letting a shopper build a 3-D model from measurements and try items on it; Lands' End Live online chat with customer service; Lands' End Custom, individually tailored garments delivered in approximately two to four weeks; and finder tools for swim and outerwear. The service list is equally specific: the GUARANTEED. PERIOD. promise allowing returns at any time for any reason, phone lines open 24 hours a day, 364 days a year, free hemming and cuffing of trousers, free fabric swatches and replacement buttons, expert monogramming, and a Lost Mitten Club replacing a child's mitten lost in the same season at half the price of a pair with free shipping.
The January 2015 Summary and the Sears Chapter
The historical reference kept in the filing is dated January 2015. Lands End, Inc. operates as a multi-channel retailer in the United States and internationally through two segments, Direct and Retail, selling casual clothing, accessories, footwear and home products through e-commerce websites, direct mail catalogs, dedicated Lands End Shops at Sears, stand-alone Lands End Inlet stores and international shop-in-shops. As of January 30, 2015, it operated 236 Lands End Shops at Sears, 14 Lands End Inlet stores and 5 international shop-in-shops; Lands End, Inc. was founded in 1963 and is headquartered in Dodgeville, Wisconsin, with its address filed as 1 Lands' End Lane, Dodgeville, WI 53595.
The Sears ownership chapter is recorded in three dated steps. Sears bought Lands' End on May 14, 2002, in a deal where Sears agreed to pay $62 for each Lands' End share. On December 6, 2013, Sears Holding Corp. announced it would spin off the Lands' End catalog business as a separate company by distributing stock to the retailer's stockholders, and Lands' End stock began trading on the NASDAQ on April 7, 2014. The filing's last detail is the famous accident: the apostrophe in Lands' End is in the wrong place - a typo in the company's first printed piece that it could not afford to reprint and correct. Use this page for those filed facts; the separate websites for the United Kingdom, Japan and Germany and the Business Outfitters site are in the References, and the official Lands' End site is the authority for current products.
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