Sale of Burt’s Bees firm may fund land purchase Owner supports park in Maine’s northern woods

RALEIGH, N.C. – There’s a buzz within the industry for earth-friendly lotions, soaps and cosmetics that iconoclastic Burt’s Bees is being shopped so its owner can devote herself to her beloved Maine woods.

The Durham-based private company’s majority owner, Roxanne Quimby, built the business from craft markets in Maine to a multimillion-dollar cosmetics company.

The merger and acquisition Web site TheDeal.com re-ported last month that Quimby planned to sell the company for as much as $150 million and that potential buyers submitted bids last month. Those details were confirmed to The News & Observer of Raleigh by a New York public-relations executive representing Burt’s Bees.

“We have no new news to report,” Jessica Barring of Behrman Communications told The Associated Press. “As I am sure you can appreciate, decisions of this nature do not necessarily run to a predetermined time frame.”

Quimby did not return calls to her home in Winter Harbor, Maine.

Her determination to conserve Maine’s forests may have a role in why efforts to sell the company – which Quimby has often talked about – are in the works now.

One of Quimby’s passions is raising money to buy land to create a 3.2 million-acre national park in the Maine wilderness. Reports say she plans to use some of her wealth from the company’s sale to buy more land for the park, which would rival Death Valley as the largest national park outside of Alaska.

Burt’s Bees has developed a customer base for its lip balm, bath oils, soaps and about 150 other personal care products made from beeswax, nut oils and other natural ingredients. The items are sold primarily through specialty shops and health stores across the United States, as well as in Canada, Europe and Japan.

Burt’s Bees started in 1984 when Quimby met a beekeeper named Burt Shavitz in rural Maine where they both lived. From old magazines, they found recipes for beeswax lip balm and polishes for furniture and shoes. They whipped up their products in an abandoned one-room schoolhouse and sold them alongside bottled honey at craft fairs. The small business grew and by 1992, it was making a half-million beeswax candles a year.

The company moved operations to North Carolina in 1994 and employs about 120 people at its headquarters and manufacturing plant in a Durham office park.

Product labels still carry images of beehives or Shavitz’s rugged, bearded face. Shavitz lives in Maine and is no longer involved with running the company.

Quimby has frequently said Burt’s Bees either will be bought out or will go public, and either would mean more cash for land purchases.

She’s on the board of directors of RESTORE: The North Woods, a Concord, Mass.-based conservation group working to establish a Maine Woods national park.

Ken Spalding, the Maine Woods project coordinator for the group in Hallowell, Maine, told The Herald-Sun of Durham that Burt’s Bees would be sold in weeks or months to buy land in Maine. He referred calls by The AP to the group’s Maine director, Jym St. Pierre, who denied any knowledge of plans to sell the company that might benefit the conservation group.