Shelf Space

I was at a Walmart for the 4th time in my life the other day and I saw Burt’s Bees products there, and it really got me thinking about how a tenacious little company like Burt’s got to share shelf space at the worlds largest retailer. Because it’s not such a little company anymore… Clorox owns Burt’s Bees now, which obviously allows it to expand to a much larger market.

It’s always a hard feeling to figure out, that strange sense of abandonment when a small company gives in and either completely sells itself to a larger corporation (i.e. Pepsi owns Naked Juice, Coke owns Odwalla), or follows more of a distribution deal model (i.e. Widmer Brothers is distributed by Anheuser-Busch, which also holds minority shares in it, and Natural American Spirits are distributed by and partially owned by R.J. Reynolds.)

I always want to give them the benefit of the doubt, and hope against hope that the quality and care put into the products will stay the same, but it seldom happens that way. Obviously, if you run a business that once ran out of a house and sold items to a few hundred people, you could focus more attention on every individual thing. And assuming you started your company with the intent on spreading quality products to as many people as possible; you’re going to continue in that direction. But it’s the classic quantity versus quality conundrum, one which is difficult to solve.



And no, I’m not looking at this through the eyes of a child. Of course if I had a company and saw the opportunity to make more money and get my product to more people I would jump on it. Also, even if it reeks of disgusting monolithic companies like Walmart just pandering to people by offering a selection of natural and organic products, I am glad that better things are being made available to more people.

And yet, as I apply my pleasantly mentholated, 100% natural lip balm, eat my organic energy bar and smoke my all natural cigarettes; I can’t help but still feel like a consumer whore, albeit one with slightly better taste than the average person.