Why Are 100,000 People On A Waiting List To Buy Duck Boots From L.L. Bean?

By Laura Northrup December 5, 2014

Do you need a warm and waterproof pair of boots so you can tromp through serious snow, slush, and ice this winter? If so, you really should have planned ahead. L.L. Bean reports that their duck boots (which are not made out of actual ducks) for men and women alike are pre-ordered so far in advance that for some sizes, you’ll be waiting around until mid-March to get your boots.

Like most trends that are making people miserable, the experts blame millennials. Specifically, high school and college students and urban-dwellers who have suddenly decided that classic waterproof footwear is back in style. The boots cost $139, but are one product that L.L. Bean still manufactures in the United States, so it was a decent choice of footwear to suddenly make trendy again.

It’s not like the company can just hire more workers and crank out enough boots to feed the trend until Christmas is over, either. “Making more boots is also a slow process given the specialization needed to produce the hand-crafted boots,” a company spokesperson explained to Yahoo Style, presumably while strapping on some snowshoes to go visit the boot warehouse. It takes a new boot-maker 26 weeks to master the stitching, so those darn kids really should have given the company at least nine months’ notice before turning the boots into a hot item. So rude.

Yahoo reports that the company is on track to sell about 450,000 pairs of boots this year, and the waiting list stands at 100,000 right now.