<http://schema.org/articleBody>
" Time to start piling boxes of footwear\u00A0in a locked shelter under your backyard, because another great boot shortage is upon us.\u00A0For the fourth\u00A0straight year, L.L. Bean is facing a backlog of its signature Bean Boots. In 2011, the 103-year-old style\u2014lovingly called the &amp;quot;duck boot&amp;quot; by traditional types\u2014\u00A0suddenly saw an insane comeback, thanks in large part to the heritage movement.\u00A0 It&amp;#039;s fashionable, it&amp;#039;s functional! It&amp;#039;s also damn near impossible to score a pair, because the things are mostly assembled by hand in a single 170,000-square-foot factory in Brunswick, Maine. Despite adding about 200 more workers to the factory line, the 2015 shortage has 50,000 people waiting for boots. That&amp;#039;s right:\u00A0practically\u00A0the same amount of people as the\u00A0entire population of Maine\u00A0are\u00A0waiting for these boots. (Kidding. Maine has at least 65,000 people.) &amp;quot;This is in some way a nice problem to have, in the sense that you have a 103-year-old product that&amp;#039;s selling off the shelves like hot cakes, and yet we have customers who are on back order who are disappointed,&amp;quot; L.L.Bean&amp;#039;s chief executive, Chris McCormick, told The Boston Globe. &amp;quot;That doesn&amp;#039;t sit well with us.&amp;quot; So, why does the Bean Boot\u00A0keep selling out if the company knows its needs to make more and is even taking pains to do so? Because L.L. Bean keeps things domestic, as The Atlantic explains. The components are sourced primarily from the U.S., and production stays in Maine, rather than being outsourced to China: &amp;quot;Fifty years ago, 98 percent of shoes for Americans were made in the U.S. Nowadays, one estimate suggests that China makes 12.5 billion pairs of shoes, which is about 90 percent of shoes made worldwide. To preserve its brand, L.L. Bean keeps operations local.&amp;quot; Unless L.L. Bean makes an uncharacteristic move in order to increase production, you can expect the shortage to hit again next year. So if you want a pair for the winter of 2016/2017, plan ahead. Buy &amp;#039;em as soon as they become available again this year, even if it&amp;#039;s spring or summer. Otherwise you&amp;#039;ll wind up in this same position next November.\u00A0 "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/style/mens-accessories/news/a39876/ll-bean-boot-shortage/>