The story of Roxanne Quimby and Burt's Bees is the stuff of entrepreneurial legend. A divorced mother living without electricity, Quimby teamed up with Burt Shavitz, a reclusive beekeeper, and began selling items made from beeswax such as candles and furniture polish. It took Quimby only 14 years to grow her company from a pot on her wood-burning kitchen stove to a nearly $50 million-per-year personal-care business that now produces soaps, lotions, cosmetics, hair-care products and a best-selling beeswax lip balm.

Last fall Quimby, who had bought out Shavitz when he retired, struck a deal to sell 80% of the company to private-equity firm AEA Investors for more than $175 million. The deal with AEA will allow Burt's Bees to continue its rapid sales growth. Sales have doubled about every two years since 1994, and at the current rate of revenue growth, the company could become a $100 million dollar company by 2006.

With the sale to AEA, Burt's Bees is guaranteed to see major changes in its product development and marketing strategies. In the past, the company's products were promoted using limited--even primitive--marketing efforts, shunning fashion-magazine ads and bypassing discount chains. Yet with the company in the hands of new ownership, and Quimby busy seeking Maine's governorship for 2006, the humble marketing efforts of the past will soon be replaced with sophisticated, high-profile advertising and promotions like those used for the largest personal-care and cosmetics companies.

(February, 2004)