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LANDS' END AND VIKING VOYAGE 1000
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Lands' End Direct Merchants, the catalog company, is the sole sponsor of Viking Voyage 1000, a recreation of Leif Eriksson's historic voyage from Greenland to the southern Canadian coast.
It was nearly one 1000 years ago 500 years before Christopher Columbus sailed from Spain to the Caribbean that the intrepid Viking sailor set his sights on lands far west, sailing from Greenland to the New World and establishing the first contact between Europeans and Native Americans. In the summer of 1997, with the financial support of Lands' End, W. Hodding Carter and a crew of eleven attempted to replicate Eriksson's journey in an authentic Viking ship. Their expedition ended abruptly six weeks into the trip when the rudder system sustained significant damage and the boat needed to be towed back to Greenland. This year, with continuing support from Lands' End, Carter and crew will try again to complete the first-ever recreation of the Vikings' voyage.
"A project like Viking Voyage 1000 is the perfect vehicle for relating an important but remote historical experience to an audience that will be fascinated by every triumph and hardship the crew experience. The response to last summer's expedition vividly demonstrated that people are indeed captivated by actual adventures," said Mike Smith, President and CEO. "We are pleased to again make this expedition possible and bring the adventure to so many people through our Beyond Lands' End web site."
Viking Voyage 1000 provided some of the inspiration for the Beyond Lands' End web site (www.beyond.landsend.com). The site is dedicated to bringing the real-time experience of adventuring to people intrigued by the unexpected and unexplored. By providing access to the thoughts and feelings of expedition members during their journeys, Beyond Lands' End enables visitors to vicariously travel through the world's wildernesses, from mountains in Alaska to the depths of the Pacific Ocean to the glaciers of Greenland.
Pairing Viking Voyage 1000 with Lands' End makes perfect sense: the company's own roots are in the sailing industry. Launched in 1963 as a racing sailboat hardware catalog business, Gary Comer, the founder, chose "Land's End" as his company's name to reflect the romantic vision of a point of departure for a perilous voyage. (The current spelling of "Lands' End" evolved when a printer misplaced the apostrophe on the cover of the first catalog and Comer elected to keep the "mistake" in place.) Today, Lands' End is an international direct merchant of casual and tailored clothing for men, women and children; accessories; soft luggage; and products for the bed and bath.
It's a sure bet the Lands' End audience will be particularly interested in Viking Voyage 1000. Nine out of ten Lands' End customers have a college education and they are three times as likely as the average American to have attended postgraduate courses. Two- thirds of Lands' End customers are involved in management or professional employment and they pursue their love of adventure through traveling and outdoor sports such as sailing, skiing and boating. Most importantly, they share an avid interest in broadening their understanding of the world and our place in it. "Part of Lands' End's commitment to our customers is providing them with information through our catalogs and web site that entertains and educates," Smith explains.
Lands' End is headquartered in Dodgeville, WI. Approximately 9 million customers have purchased from one of Lands' End's catalogs during the past three years. Lands' End is a publicly traded company listed on the New York Stock Exchange (ticker symbol LE). Net sales for the fiscal year 1998 were $1.26 billion.
Viking Voyage 1000 is made possible through the sponsorship of Lands' End Direct Merchants.
For more information contact: Gary Collins, Fleishman-Hillard, Inc.,
212-453-2127,
collinsg@fleishman.com, or Lisa Mullen, Lands' End, Inc., 608-935-4
274, llmulle@landsend.com.