This post is part of our Big Company, Small Town series, featuring large companies and the small towns in which they are headquartered.

Few companies are as strongly associated with their hometowns as L.L. Bean, which has been producing outdoor clothing, sporting goods, and brightly colored preppy wear in Freeport, Maine, since 1912. The company's first product, the iconic rubber boot called the Maine hunting shoe, was manufactured in Freeport, and quickly became a big hit despite the fact that most of the first boots sold were returned due to a design defect.

In the past 95 or so years, both L.L. Bean and Freeport have come a long way. The company store, which began in a basement, grew significantly over the years, despite the fact that most of Bean's $1.5 billion in annual sales come through its ubiquitous mail-order catalog. The store has been open 24 hours a day since 1951, with a few exceptions for the deaths of John F. Kennedy and the founder, Leon Leonwood Bean.

Today, the company dominates the very small town of Freeport, population 7,800. It's much more than just a store, as its multiple buildings, parking lots, and outdoor patios and sculptures define the town itself. L.L. Bean has become more of a campus than a store, with different buildings for clothes, hunting and fishing gear, bikes and boats, and a discount outlet, as well as outdoor spaces dedicated to demonstrations of equipment and live musical performances.

As some of you have probably already noticed, this year's holiday shopping season has started a little earlier than usual. For those of you who have not noticed the early arrival of the season, don't worry, you aren't blind, you are just proof that retailers have been successful in their attempt to start the holiday shopping without anyone noticing.

Typically, we can at least expect retailers to wait until we get past Halloween to start the hard hitting marketing campaigns, but this year is a bit different. Retailers usually expect strong sales leading up to the holidays, but this year there are economic jitters weighing on the minds of consumers, along with fear related to the massive Chinese toy recalls that we have witnessed this year, and are likely to continue to hear about.