Bees and Trees

The journey started when Quimby and George St. Clair loaded up the requisite Volkswagen microbus and headed to Vermont, looking to buy a homestead. They soon discovered their 3,000 nest egg wasn t enough to buy much of anything in the Green Mountain State, not even bare land. Try Maine, someone suggested. 

Growing up—mostly in Lexington, Massachusetts, but in other towns, too—Roxanne and her sisters received no allowance. Instead, they were encouraged by her father, who worked in sales and had to move the family from time to time, to find ways to earn spend- 

Then there were Maine s high unemployment taxes and workers compensation costs. Quimby embraced numerous liberal causes and environmentally friendly practices, even when they might hurt shortterm profits, but she had also evolved into a hard-nosed businesswoman. She began to think there might be a better place for Burt s Bees to grow, where the cost of doing business might be lower. 

Quimby contacted the state economic development offices in North Carolina, Florida, and Maine—the first two because of their business-friendly reputation, and the third to be fair, to see if there might be some incentives available to relocate within the state. Both southern states overnighted full packets of material to Quimby, including a CD-ROM from North Carolina that allowed her to calculate her payroll taxes and workers compensation costs, which compared very fa- 

The Greater Good model wasn t perfect—some compromises had 

---