Burt Shavitz, the iconic co-founder of Burt's Bees and owner of the bearded face on the label of every Burt's Bees product, has passed away at the age of 80.
The Associated Press reports that Shavitz died due to respiratory complications in his unconventional home in Bangor, Maine. He was surrounded by friends and family, says a spokesperson for Burt's Bees.
"Burt Shavitz, our co-founder and namesake, has left for greener fields and wilder woods," says the company in a statement. "We remember him as a bearded, free-spirited Maine man, a beekeeper, a wisecracker, a lover of golden retrievers and his land. Above all, he taught us to never lose sight of our relationship with nature."
Shavitz served in the U.S. Army and was a photographer for "Time-Life" in New York City before moving north to Maine as a hippie, where he met art school graduate and hitchhiker Roxanne Quimby while selling honey from his bees as a roadside peddler in the 1980s.
Shavitz and Quimby instantly hit it off, and Quimby began selling candles made from Shavitz' beeswax. On their first craft fair, the pair made $200, but it did not take long before they made $20,000 selling beeswax candles in farmer markets and fairs on their first year as business partners. They soon expanded into an entire line of natural care products, including soaps, lotions, face washes and the company's most popular product, lip balms.
"Burt was an enigma; my mentor and my muse," Quimby says in a statement. "I am deeply saddened."
However, Shavitz and Quimby's partnership broke down in 1994 when she took the company to North Carolina and forced Shavitz out of the company with accusations of sexual harassment. In 2007, Burt's Bees was purchased by Clorox for $925 million, but Shavitz continued to make appearances as a spokesperson for the company.
Shavitz's years after co-founding Burt's Bees are highlighted in the documentary "Burt's Buzz," where he gives us a glimpse of his unconventional life. In his later years, Shavitz enjoyed living off on acres of land in rural Maine inside a cluttered home that was once a turkey coop, with no running water and a wood stove for cooking. He opted not to dwell on what-could-have-been's and focused instead on what he already had.
"I've got 40 acres. And it's good and sufficient and it takes good care of me," Shavitz said in an interview with the New York Times in 2014. "There's no noise. There's no children screaming. There's no people getting up at 5 o'clock in the morning and trying to start their car and raising hell. Everybody has their own idea of what a good place to be is, and this is mine."
