How does a quirky company founded by a reclusive beekeeper and a single mother -- rooted in a 1970s anti-corporate, granola ethos -- succeed when corporate titans nearby are struggling to survive?

Burt's Bees hit on its recession-proof formula years ago. It went natural before natural was cool. And it made specialty personal-care products before such items went mainstream.

No matter how bad the economy gets, "it's the small luxuries, the small indulgences, that people are reluctant to trade off," Replogle said.

According to Burt's Bees lore, the company began after Burt Shavitz, then 49, a reclusive beekeeper who lived in a converted turkey coop and sold honey in pickle jars from the back of a truck, picked up a hitchhiker, Roxanne Quimby, 34, a divorced mother of two, on a Maine roadside in 1984.

"We've never attracted our consumers on price," said Peter Alberse, who's in charge of Burt's Bees' customer development. "It's always about what's in the product, and what's not in the product."