As ‘Natural Lip Balm’ Becomes a Commodity Product, Burt’s Bees Creates Buzz with New Licensing Deals
I was surprised to see Burt’s Bees-branded burp cloths in my granddaughter’s nursery recently. Isn’t Burt’s Bees a personal care products brand? Yes, it is and more. Here’s a brand strategy example of leveraging a well-regarded brand for complementary products.
Since 2012, Burt’s Bees has licensed its brand to a manufacturer of baby clothes. With its “Earth friendly, natural” brand persona, the brand is a strong fit for a line of baby clothes that specialize in 100% organic cotton fabric. Before Burt’s Bees could leverage its popular brand to include other products where consumers care deeply about “natural,” it first had to build the brand persona.
Brand Strategy Example:
How ‘Natural Beeswax’ Became the Word on Everyone’s Lips
Before a product could claim the “natural” quality as a benefit, other products had to become “unnatural.” Since the Industrial Revolution, we have found ways to make products from synthetic materials that outperform the natural material by being cheaper, more convenient, more durable and many other “betters.” But like many new approaches, there are tradeoffs to be made to get the “cheaper, faster, more durable” product. Synthetic materials may have chemical residues, may be harder on the environment (both in production and disposal), and may lack other benefits found in the natural material.
Influenced by books like Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring published in 1962, a back-to-nature movement began in the U.S. If synthetic pesticides could cause so much harm, Americans began to question the potential harm of other synthetics that they consumed in their food, clothing, housing and much more. The result was the imbuing of good qualities like healthy, safe and environmentally friendly into the word “natural.”
Burt’s Bees was born into this world of natural equals good. The initial products – whether the original candles (no longer made) or the furniture polish (quickly abandoned) or the blockbuster lip balm (now coming in a HUGE variety of flavors)– all had beeswax as their main ingredient. Moreover, not just any beeswax but beeswax from the hives owned and tended by Burt himself.
Just as important, all the supporting characters for this Natural Only product are actually naturally occurring. Even the ones I had never heard of or are hard to pronounce!
Beeswax, Coconut Oil, Sunflower Seed Oil, Peppermint Oil, Lanolin, Tocopherol (Vitamin E), Rosemary Leaf Extract, Soybean Oil, Canola Oil, Limonene [naturally occurring, colorless liquid hydrocarbon found in the essential oils of citrus fruits], Linalool [natural, widely occurring terpenoid alcohol known for its pleasant, floral, and slightly sweet aroma, often described as similar to lavender. It’s found in various plants, flowers, and spices], Eugenol [naturally occurring phenol compound primarily found in cloves and other plants like cinnamon and nutmeg. It has a characteristic clove-like scent and is known for its anesthetic, antiseptic, and anti-inflammatory properties]
Brand Strategy Example:
Product Packaging Buzzes with Benefits
The original packaging sported the face of Burt Shavitz with all his wild hair (a man truly at home in the “remote Maine wilderness”) and emphasized its brand-building attribute – 100% natural, which was supported by the “beeswax” ingredient front and center.
Currently, the packaging is less “Burt” centric and sports a variety of designs. However, most keep the 100% Natural front-and-center.
Source: Amazon, April 2025
Brand Strategy Example:
A Charming Origin Narrative
From the company’s website, the narrative is sprinkled with images of natural country living and doing things the old (aka, better) ways:
“Burt Shavitz and Roxanne Quimby created Burt’s Bees in the remote Maine wilderness in the early 1980s after leaving their hectic city lives behind. The two hit it off when Burt pulled over to pick up a hitchhiking Roxanne. Burt had learned to keep bees and had been selling honey roadside. Roxanne apprenticed and found a book of recipes that they used to transform their beeswax into candles and lip balm.”
What could be more natural than beekeeping in the remote Maine wilderness? Further, the original beeswax products are from a found book of recipes, not perfected in a lab.
Brand Strategy Example:
Pollinating the Brand to Unrelated Products (But Similar Customer Segments)
In 2012, Burt’s Bees began licensing its brand to baby clothes made from 100% organic cotton. This is called leveraging a brand. All fabric is GOTS (Global Organic Textile Standard)-certified organic cotton. But this is not all: trims are recycled polyester, and the dyeing process uses less water than the traditional process. These are baby clothes that can meet the standards of Burt’s Bees: natural, clean, eco-friendly, and sustainable.
Burt’s Bees took advantage of its biggest brand strengths becoming the mainstream rather than just a niche market. In the 1990s, grocery stores began to offer organic food sections, fueled by health scares related to pesticide residue, food additives and hormone-treated meat. By the 2010s, products that formerly could only be found in Natural Food stores appeared in mainstream grocery. Further, parents and Millennials perceived “natural” as safer and healthier for their children. And, they were willing to pay more for these benefits.
Now Burt’s Bees Baby offers a wide range of baby and young child clothing, nursery basics, bedding and even matching clothing for Mom and Dad, which are available in major retailers like Walmart and Target.
Leveraging can go both ways, as this brand strategy example shows. The new product reinforces the brand of the original product and potentially introduces new consumers to the original product. And I suspect Burt’s Bees is much in need of this customer expansion.
Since Burt’s Bees introduced its lip balm in 1991, competition in the natural personal care market has increased dramatically, which has the effect of driving down prices. When Clorox purchased Burt’s Bees from private equity firm AEA Investors and co-founder Roxanne Quimby in 2007, a 0.15-ounce tube of the original Burt’s Bees lip balm was priced at $3. Today, that same tube is $3.99. The price increase is a mere 1.7% annually, not even meeting the inflation rate of 2.3%.
Perhaps it is time to expand the Burt’s Bees brand to even more products where natural is deeply valued by consumers. And, for the healthy future of Burt’s Bees’ bottom line, these products should be carefully chosen for profit margin.
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