PORTLAND – Hit hard by the recession, Maine’s L.L. Bean is considering company restructuring, cost cutting and even layoffs to deal with weak sales.

The Freeport-based catalog retailer expects to miss its holiday sales target by 10 percent or more, and the company doesn’t expect the situation to improve in the new year, Chris McCormick, president and CEO, wrote in an e-mail memo to L.L. Bean’s 9,400 employees.

“It appears that the Grinch has stolen a substantial piece of Christmas,” McCormick wrote.

L.L. Bean plans to offer voluntary retirement incentives and to open only two of eight previously planned new stores in the new year. But those steps alone probably won’t be enough to stave off layoffs, he wrote in the memo, first obtained by the Times Record newspaper.

“Even with these options on the table, it is now unlikely that we will be able to avoid some level of involuntary position elimination both to support our multichannel transformation, and to resize ourselves for a smaller revenue base,” McCormick wrote.

L.L. Bean had anticipated flat sales and was aggressive in its marketing efforts, offering a $10 gift card with a purchase of $50 or more. The company also reduced the seasonal work force at its call centers, retail locations and distribution center by 23 percent.

But the company didn’t anticipate a double-digit drop in revenue in the all-important holiday season, spokeswoman Carolyn Beem said Tuesday. Because of the decline, annual revenues will be down for only the third time since 1960, Beem said.

The company is seeking to avoid involuntary job eliminations through early retirement incentives, to be announced some time after the new year, Beem said. The last time L.L. Bean laid off workers was in the company’s 2000-2001 fiscal year, she added.

The announcement comes in stark contrast to last year’s sales, which jumped 5.5 percent, fueled by strong December results that bucked the overall trend among retailers.

Net sales for the fiscal year ended Feb. 24 totaled $1.62 billion, up from $1.54 billion the year before, the company reported. The privately held company does not release earnings.

L.L. Bean’s board approved a bonus of 5 percent of annual pay to its 5,000 year-round employees, a payout totaling about $18.5 million. McCormick said in his memo that it’s “increasingly unlikely that we will be able to pay a discretionary bonus” this year.

Despite the disappointing outlook, McCormick said the 96-year-old company is in a good position to ride out the tough economy.

“L.L. Bean is operating essentially debt-free which in this economy is quite an accomplishment, and insulates us, somewhat, from the turbulent credit markets,” he wrote last week.

He credited conservative financial management for putting the company in a position to weather a significant downturn “like we are seeing.”

While L.L. Bean is scaling back spending and new store construction, one effort that remains under way is a theme park-style adventure center to be built on a 700-acre parcel owned by the outdoors outfitter in Freeport, about a mile from Bean’s 24-hour store.

That proposal, aimed at bolstering L.L. Bean’s flagship store as a destination, has no specific timetable, but is probably three years from completion, Beem said.