Processing Your Payment

Please do not leave this page until complete. This can take a few moments.

July 23, 2007

Queen bee | Roxanne Quimby is back to being the boss with her new startup, Happy Green Bee

By Taylor Smith
There are still plenty of trucks around Maine with "Ban Roxanne" stickers on their rear bumpers. But the lightning rod that has been Roxanne Quimby seems to attract a good deal fewer strikes these days. Quimby, the woodsy entrepreneur who turned Burt's Bees from a cottage industry into a multimillion personal-care empire before cashing out in 2003, has made enemies over the last several years by scooping up pieces of Maine's North Woods for her grand plan to build a national park in northern Maine.

But despite plenty of pressure from critics ˆ— including the hunters and snowmobilers barred from her 80,000 acres of Maine woods ˆ— Quimby hasn't bowed her resolve. Indeed, like any skilled executive, Quimby in recent months has worked to bring her critics to the bargaining table in hopes of reaching an amicable compromise. According to Quimby, "Things are progressing."

Whether that compromise comes is anyone's guess, but one thing's for sure: Quimby, 57, has less time these days to spend poring over maps and fighting over land-use rules. That's because Quimby late last year launched her newest venture, Happy Green Bee, a Raleigh, N.C.-based manufacturer of organic clothing for kids. The new company is a distinct departure from the personal care industry that Burt's Bees stormed in the late 80s and 90s, but the change in venue doesn't faze Quimby. Instead, after her blockbuster win with Burt's Bees, 80% of which she sold in 2003 for more than $170 million, her main concern is keeping expectations manageable. "It's like, 'Just give me a chance, guys,'" she says. "Typically, the way I like to grow businesses, I like to start from scratch. I like to really nurture them along, and then let them fly."

Mainebiz recently sat down with Quimby at her home in Portland's West End. The conversation ranged from land ownership to launching a new firm, with an entrepreneurial lesson from Abraham Lincoln thrown in for good measure. An edited transcript of the conversation follows.

Mainebiz: You just couldn't stay away from the entrepreneurial life, huh?

Roxanne Quimby: Well, I was thinking I'm a serial entrepreneur, which is better than a serial criminal, I guess. But, I just really like small businesses. I like the possibility. You know, possibility is a big, inspiring word for me. And there are so many possibilities for small businesses. And so I also find it allows me to be very creative ˆ— do a lot of different things everyday as kind of a new adventure. And, I like that kind of activity. That's what I like to pace my days. And, it suits me. I'm certainly too young to retire from the business world.

What do you like most about running a startup?

Well, marketing and product development are really important to me. That's basically how I built Burt's Bees ˆ— on its marketing, and on product development and packaging. And that's what I would use as the basis for any consumer product kind of business.

But then it's really important to me to be the boss. I absolutely have to be the boss.

Really?

Yes, because I take a lot of risks, and nobody would allow me to take those many risks unless I was the boss. An example of that would be taking a woman's personal care line that she puts on her face and body for beauty and putting a bearded hippie ˆ— you know, a woodsy hermit ˆ— on the box. If I were working for a personal care company where I wasn't the boss that would not have happened.

Who do you look to when you're making these decisions?

Well, the person who speaks loudest to me is my consumer, and I listen to her. She's my ultimate boss, because if she doesn't like it and buy it, I'm not in business. So she's my first ˆ— and most of the consumers of the products I tend to make and sell are women. So I totally have this woman in mind. And I want to please her, because I want her to buy the product. So, if they're outraged about something, then obviously I'm going to listen to that.

How do you market your products?

I certainly think that market demographic studies are useful. They can sort of gear you in the right direction, but they can't get the customer for you. Still, the relationship with the consumer ˆ— I'm sort of really focused on that. And I owe her all of the product design, because they pull you along.

You can't get it perfect the first time. So you do your best. You put it out there and then they will decide what lives and what dies by what they buy. And then you fine-tune your offering to eliminate or phase out things that they don't really buy. And try to figure out what was it that they liked about this that they bought, and then make more of that.

So, they shape it as you go along. And if you're open to being pulled along by your customer again, ultimately you'll get pretty good at figuring out what she wants. Much of her communication to you is unspoken, too, you know.

Yeah, so how do you identify that? It seems like there's a bit of ESP there.

I watch very carefully. I go to places where my consumers like to shop and I sit. I'll sit at a chair in a busy retail environment where my consumer tends to shop, and I'll watch them ˆ— their every move. I'll watch what they put in their carts. Then I know what they're eating. I watch them when they're making choices.

One of my all-time heroes ˆ— probably the biggest hero that I have ˆ— is Abraham Lincoln. I'm very inspired by him. And one of the things he used to do, he said, is open the doors of the White House on ˆ— I think it was Thursdays, or whatever ˆ— but, anybody who wanted to come in and talk. Of course, he was advised [against] that, but he'd say, "No, I have to take my public opinion bath." So whenever I do this market research by jumping into that environment, I'm always like, "I've got to take my public opinion bath here, see what it is that they're buying."

When you launched Happy Green Bee, were you nervous about the success you had with Burt's Bees and whether you'd be able to replicate that success?

Well, it's totally different. It's clothing. And that is so different than skin care, so I'm just a complete novice. Everything I'm learning about clothing ˆ— all the issues concerning sizing, which certainly wasn't an issue at Burt's Bees. So that's an issue, and inventory control becomes a much more complicated issue. Sizing is a complication. Seasonality is a complication ˆ— none of which I learned anything about at Burt's Bees, because none of those issues were a challenge.

I've heard you say that Maine's business climate made it difficult to grow Burt's Bees, so you moved it to North Carolina. What was so hard about running a company in Maine?

Well, they're still the highest tax state, or one of the highest, right? Every April 15th on AOL, they give you your list of the highest, and Maine's at the top of the list. We're very high. And that's a problem. I mean, you're going to go to low-cost places to do business. You have to. And Maine is not a low-cost place to do business.

And there's other challenges ˆ— geographic challenges ˆ— but there are other states that are geographically removed from the marketplace that are still fine, like Florida and Washington, which are in the corners. And, yet Washington had Boeing and they have Microsoft, and Florida certainly has no financial problems. So, I can't say that it's just because of the remoteness.

But Maine is remote in other ways that make it difficult for a business to function. Obviously, Winter Harbor [where Quimby owns a home] is not the height of metropolis, but I had to get two FedEx's out yesterday, and I had to drive 25 miles to the nearest drop. And I sure didn't want to do it, but I had to get those samples out yesterday. So, obviously, that is a problem.

Maine is such an entrepreneurial state, but you say it's hard to grow a business in Maine. How do those two things, in your mind, get reconciled?

Well, what happens when the small business becomes a big business? That's the problem. Maine is a great place to start a business. And, it's not bad to grow a business up to about five to 10 people, I think. But, when you start needing departments and department heads, and then people who've had 15 years in the business, those people have jobs already. And it's hard to attract people to Maine. I tried. Before we left Fairfield, we put ads in The Boston Globe, The Wall Street Journal. And we had people come up all the way with their MBA's, and they'd ˆ— they were all men ˆ— get up there and they'd say, "You know, I'd move up here, but I'd never get my wife to, because there's no shopping malls for her."

But Maine is a good place to start a business?

It's a good place to start a business because it's so inspiring here. I'm truly inspired in Maine. And, it takes inspiration to be an entrepreneur, and maybe that's why there's so many of them here. They're inspired by our beautiful landscape, and it's just a wonderful place in that regard. But, if you need, 50, 100, 200 employees ˆ— I think Burt's Bees has 400 now ˆ— that would be tough to build that in a couple of years. Even down here in southern Maine it would be hard to do.

I want to ask about the new company, Happy Green Bee. You've pushed it from a pretty green direction ˆ— organic cotton, post-consumer buttons. Is that the niche you want to be in?

Well, it's growing fast. Twenty-five years ago, you would never have predicted that one of those health food stores where you were buying your brown rice would be a publicly traded, multi-billion-dollar store and have all the traditional grocery stores following them and trying to do what they're doing to get some of that growth. Who would have been able to predict that?

Are you at all concerned that the green market is getting so crowded? Will that make it harder for a company like Happy Green Bee to stand out?

I think all markets are crowded. We have too many consumer goods. So, no matter what market niche you want to fill with a new product, you're going to have a lot of competition. And the whole challenge is to differentiate yourself from them in a way that the consumer applauds ˆ— not necessarily by saying bad things about them, but just by being a market leader on all levels. Competing in the green industry with a whole lot of competitors isn't any more difficult, or less difficult, than competing in any other industry that has a lot of competitors.

I want to shift the conversation to your property holdings. In a recent profile in Vanity Fair magazine, you said that the critics of your land-use policies were preservationists as well, because they were trying to preserve their way of life. Has your perspective changed about land use?

Well, I'm still in the most strict sense of the definition a wilderness advocate. And I still believe that the less human impact, the better. I'm still completely opposed to motorized access to the lands I own, and I still don't allow hunting.

Nothing has changed about the way I see my management plan, but I also am trying to work with the people who I've alienated with my management plan. I just picked certain folks that represented a certain point of view and asked them to meet with me. We've been meeting once a month since October. You know, they're seeing that I'm a reasonable person, and I'm willing to make certain compromises ˆ— not a lot, but, you know, just enough so that we can all sort of live up there. And, things are progressing, I would say. But the way I see my land managed is really a strict wilderness.

Do you still have plans for a national park?

I had hoped for the national park idea because I liked that idea of people in the wilderness. But people don't like the national park idea up there. I thought it was a great idea. But if we can't have that, I'm not going to fight for an idea that has got no hope.

This is kind of a speculative question about Happy Green Bee: Where do you see it going?

Well, my current benchmark is the Hannah Anderson Company. And I think Hannah Anderson, which is a line of infant and children's wear, does around $75 million, I think, in sales. So, the way I set goals for myself is I find a company that's where I want to be and then I just aim for that. I always feel like, "Well, if she could do it, why not me?"

Built for comfort

After selling 80% of Burt's Bees in 2003, Roxanne Quimby took a break from the daily grind of entrepreneurial life. She devoted time to her land holdings in Maine, and also spent a year traveling to locales as varied as Antarctica and Paris.

But Quimby could stay still for only so long. Late last year, she launched her newest venture, Happy Green Bee, a childrens' clothing company featuring all-organic materials and bee-striped patterns.

The clothing industry is worlds away from selling lip balm and face cream, says Quimby. But other changes are in the offing, too: This time around, Quimby says she's been happy to let other people in the company make decisions ˆ— a tough change for an entrepreneur who's used to making the call on every detail. "At a certain point, you realize that you must become a manager, which is hard for an entrepreneur, to give up their hands-on [role]," she says. "I'm past that. I already went through that stage where I thought I had to do everything."

The company is still in its infancy, but Happy Green Bee clothes have found space in stores like Whole Foods and customers through a handful of online retailers. But Quimby earlier this summer said she was close to striking "homerun" deals with two clothing catalog companies interested in carrying the kids' clothing line.

While Quimby touts the organic cotton and post-consumer buttons used in the clothing, she also recognizes the market opportunities for Happy Green Bee. "It's so cool, because I think it'll do well [in the catalogs]," she says. "And I also happen to have good cost [of] goods on those, so I can make some money."
Taylor Smith

Green acres

East Branch Sanctuary
Township 5, Range 8
Acres: 10,556
Details: Includes a nine-mile stretch of the Penobscot River's East Branch, a six-mile boundary with Baxter State Park and two ponds ˆ— Messer Pond (26 acres) and Little Messer Pond (28 acres).

Wassataquoik Sanctuary
Township 3, Range 7; Township 4, Range 8
Acres: 12,030
Details: Nine miles of the Wassataquoik Stream and two miles on the East Branch of the Penobscot; remains of an early Maine fish hatchery that ran from 1903 to 1915.

Three Rivers Sanctuary/Lunksoos Sanctuary
Township 3, Range 7/Township 4, Range 7
Acres: 9,896 acres/2,683 acres
Details: Six miles of the East Branch of the Penobscot; an "outstanding" hardwood forest and "exemplary" silver maple floodplain forests, according to Elliottsville Plantation Inc., Quimby's land management group.

Sandy Stream Sanctuary
Township 2, Range 8; Township 3, Range 8
Acres: 23,000
Details: Five miles of the Sandy Stream and an "extensive" wetland complex, notes EPI.

Sign up for Enews

Most Recent

Most Recent

Comments

Order a PDF