Roxanne Quimby is a co-owner of Burt’s Bees, a manufacturer of beeswax based personal care products and handmade crafts located in central Maine. Her co-owner is Burt Shavits, owner of the bee farm where Burt’s Bees originated. Roxanne and Burt started their business with only a small capital. The company has 44 employees with Roxanne, in-charge in the business’ operations and Burt, in-charge of other tasks (Timmons and Spinelli 2007).
Burt’s Bees does not use any machinery in their operations and everything is done manually, from mixing of ingredients to product packaging. If the demand from the client is very high, Roxanne helps her employees in their work. For the past years since Roxanne and Burt started Burt’s Bees, the business has been accumulating good amount of revenues and clients. This is due to Roxanne and Burt’s hard work and the company’s productive and ethical workers (Timmons and Spinelli 2007).
Recently, Burt Bees was moved from Maine to North Carolina due to several reasons. The company’s lack of workers’ skills, need for automation to meet the increasing demand, high transport cost from the plant to Metropolitan area and high payroll taxes in Maine are the reasons why Roxanne decided to move the business to other location. They chose North Carolina due to its benefits like large supply of skilled labor, low taxes and transport costs, more opportunities to acquire clients, and a chance to hire appropriate and skillful employees and managers that can help in managing and monitoring operations. After several negotiations with the government of Maine and North Carolina, the company was moved and employee hiring was conducted to replace the employees that were left in Maine.
However, the sudden move from Maine to North Carolina forced Burt’s Bees to focus its operations on skin care products and use machines for production. This is totally new to Roxanne and considering that the business have to leave its original product line that brought the company success makes her feel guilty. She is now left with three choices: go back to Maine, stay in North Carolina or sell the Company (Timmons and Spinelli 2007).
References
Timmons, J. and Spinelli S. (2007) New Venture Creation. Mc Graw Hill Professional.
