Burts Bees Review
Has Burt’s Bees Lost its Mojo?
The market for natural personal care products has grown exponentially within the last two decades, and few companies have provided a more successful and visible face for this trend than Burt’s Bees. Starting out as a hand-made candle manufacturer, Burt’s Bees underwent a number of organizational transformations before it began manufacturing its popular line of personal care products, a line which now produces nearly 200 individual products and millions of dollars of revenue a year.
Yet the explosive growth of Burt’s Bees begs the question- has the company been able to maintain what made its special in the first place, or has success caused an irreversible shift in the brand’s priorities?
Burt’s Bees Winding Road to Personal Care
Founded in 1984 with $200 as a partnership between two friends, Burt’s Bees originally focused exclusively on making and selling beeswax candles. From the beginning Burt’s Bees made a public commitment to many of its presently recognizable ideals, including a focus on quality, all-natural ingredients and environmentally-friendly production practices.
As a candle-making company Burt’s Bees grew rapidly, expanding its initial investment of $200 into a $20,000 business by the end of its first year alone. The company remained exclusively in the candle-making business for its first five years of operation- Burt’s Bees didn’t begin producing traditional personal care products until 1989. Within two years Burt’s Bees developed and began to sell its famous lip balm, the product which would quickly become the brand’s signature offering. Within another two years, in 1993, Burt’s Bees devoted itself completely to producing personal care products and shed the rest of its product line.
It’s clear that Burt’s Bees didn’t simply ride the wave of popularity afforded to the “all natural” movement in the 1990’s. Instead, Burt’s Bees was one of the movement’s leading agents of growth. What isn’t immediately clear is how effectively the company has been able to stick to their most basic philosophies while expanding into a powerful global economic force.
The Problem of Principles and Growth
These days Burt’s Bees products are available in over 30,000 stores, spread out among 6 different countries. Throughout its rapid expansion, Burt’s Bees has purported to focus on a few core guiding principles:
- A “home-made” aesthetic
- All natural ingredients
- High quality, environmentally friendly production methods
- Socially and environmentally conscious corporate practices
From the outside, few, if any, of these guiding principles appear congruent with a company chasing massive expansion at the rate Burt’s Bees prioritized their rapid growth. It’s easy to follow the knee-jerk belief that Burt’s Bees “sold out” or otherwise compromised its deepest held beliefs in order to seek financial success. But the evidence just doesn’t support such a negative position.
Home-Made Aesthetics, All Natural Ingredients and Congruent Production Policies
Burt’s Bees products don’t look a whole lot different than they did 20 years ago. The company still uses neutral colors and tones in each of their product’s simple packaging. Their product’s advertising focuses on providing information and not simply hitting hot-button, emotionally charged selling points. The Burt’s Bees “brand” still focuses on substance over flash, despite their massive increase in popularity.
Of course, this branding strategy is more clever than it initially appears and attempts to encourage the belief that Burt’s Bees products are still essentially “home made.” This assumption is a lie. Burt’s Bees products have been created in mass-production facilities since the 1990’s, mass-production facilities which aren’t that much different than their less quaint competitor’s.
This switch from small-scale production can be seen as a betrayal of what Burt’s Bees built its success on, but such a perspective isn’t entirely fair. Burt’s Bees is now mass producing their products, yes, but they’ve done so with two points in mind:
- Small-batch production is unrealistic for the quantities of products Burt’s Bees needs to ship, especially if they desire to keep the price of those products affordable.
- Burt’s Bees has done their best to pursue mass-production methods which mirror their guiding principles as closely as possible.
Burt’s Bees’ large-scale production facilities are still focused on producing high-quality products with a minimum amount of processing and an emphasis on maintaining a high level of purity. Even though they now make their products en masse, Burt’s Bees still primarily utilizes all-natural ingredients in their products. The majority of Burt’s Bees products are 99% all-natural, while over half of their product line is composed of 100% all-natural ingredients.
Has Burt’s Bees lost something by switching to large-scale manufacturing processes? Most likely. Is that “something” noticeable or significant, especially when considering the massively increased demand the company now faces? Not at all.
Burt’s Bees Social and Environmental Consciousness
Just as Burt’s Bees production facilities focus on maintaining the purity of their products, the company’s production, packaging and distribution practices remain concerned with environmental friendliness and socially conscious practices.
Burt’s Bees’ modern business model revolves around the principle of “The Greater Good.” The company’s business model places an emphasis on organizational transparency, environmentally sensitive packaging, sustainable production methods, a focus on both human and animal rights, social responsibility (details of which they make available in an annual Corporate Social Responsibility Report) and a minimum of 10% of their website’s revenues redirected to charity. Burt’s Bees has been instrumental in a number of high-profile initiatives, including the preservation of 185,000 acres of forest land in the company’s original home in the state of Maine. Even since being acquired by a private equity firm in 2004, Burt’s Bees continues to hold true to these principles, both in speech and in practice.
At the moment Burt’s Bees has managed to retain its commitment to high quality, high purity products produced in a responsible manner. All signs indicate the company will continue to retain its commitment to these principles. Overall, Burt’s Bees offers high-quality, all-natural products from a company you can be proud to support.
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