Ch. 11 Developing & Managing Products

Burt's Bees began in 1894 selling candles. The owners at the time Roxanne Quimby and Burt Shavitz used left over beeswax from Shavitz' honey bee business to create the candles. In 1991 when the company incorporated they extended there product mix to include beeswax based lip balms.

Below, take a look at Burt's Bees first lip balm.

Today the Burt's Bees lip balms remains the companies best-selling product. Over the years the company has extended and modified many of its existing products, and the lip balms have continued to evolve as well. The product lines have changed as well as the packaging, still going hand-in-hand with the Burt's Bees Greater Good business model while staying creative and eco-friendly.

The difference between the first and second picture clearly show a difference in the same Burt's Bees product, and here it is clear that packaging plays a large role in the evolution and life-cycle of a product. The older version is much harder to find today and while shopping at local retailers that stock Burt's Bees merchandise it is hard to find on shelves.

In time Burt's Bees has brainstormed and developed new versions of the same type of product existing within a product line, which now ranges from lip shimmers, to tints and to lip glosses. Additionally all the products within this category are still made with beeswax, and other natural ingredients of course.