Burt From Burt's Bees Is Mobbed by Fans in Taiwan
LatestA new documentary called Burt’s Buzz gives viewers a look at the life of the founder of Burt’s Bees.
The company’s evolution from a grassroots business to a multimillion dollar division of Clorox is fascinating, as is the story of Roxanne Quimby and Burt Shavitz, the people who co-founded it. But, as Biggie Smalls warned us years ago, with more money come more problems. Here’s a bit of back story on their growth and the resulting internal turmoil via The New York Times in 2008.
[Mr. Shavitz] lost out on a huge payday. In 1999, Ms. Quimby bought out his one-third share in Burt’s Bees by buying him a house in Maine. Much grander than a turkey coop, the home cost $130,000, Ms. Quimby says. She now calls that figure “embarrassing” considering how much she made from the company.
Mr. Shavitz did not respond when asked if he hired advisers to determine whether he had been paid a fair valuation for his stake. He sold the house in Maine a few months after Ms. Quimby bought it for him because, she says, he missed his turkey coop. (He has since enlarged it to about 12 feet by 20 feet.)
By 2000, Burt’s Bees was pulling in $23 million in revenue, according to the company. Ms. Quimby said she had always intended to sell the company and had received offers for quite some time before she put it up for auction in 2003. That year, AEA Investors, a private equity firm in New York, paid Ms. Quimby $141.6 million for an 80 percent stake in Burt’s Bees. If Mr. Shavitz had held onto the stake he traded to Ms. Quimby for $130,000, it would have been worth about $59 million.
At the time of that deal, Mr. Shavitz demanded more money and Ms. Quimby said she agreed to pay him $4 million. Burt’s Bees also pays Mr. Shavitz an undisclosed amount each year for using his name and image on its products. Through a Burt’s Bees spokeswoman, Mr. Shavitz declined to comment on any payments he had received or the reasons for his fallout with Ms. Quimby. When asked if he and Ms. Quimby were still friends, Mr. Shavitz said, “Sure.”
“What happened between us in our personal relationship in the past is history,” he said via a statement released at the time. “The magic of living life for me is, and always has been, the magic of living on the land, not in the magic of money.”