Word: leonwood
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...pioneer merchandise houses were actually led by seed companies and, curiously enough, sporting-goods retailers. Their prosperous successors in the fitness era are such companies as Seattle's Eddie Bauer and Orvis, in Manchester, Vt. The most famous of all came along in 1912 when Leon Leonwood Bean started selling his rubber-bottomed hunting shoes from a Main Street address in Freeport...
...Leon Leonwood Bean sent a one-page circular advertising his new rubber hunting shoe to every person with a Maine hunting licence. He developed the boot, at least according to legend, because he was tired of coming back from hunting trips with aching, wrinkled feet...
...Leon Leonwood, always well-protected from the elements in his Bean gear, ran the operation himself until he died at the age of 94, in 1967. "He was strictly a 19th-century character," Bean public affairs director Kilt Andrews insists. But the stout-hearted State of Mainer, who hailed from the Bethel area, possessed at least a little savvy when it came to business. His chamois shirts, his touring canoes and campstoves, and most of all his Maine hunting boots supported a $4.75-million mini-empire when he expired...