Label Bette Paige Sets New Course With Vibes Base

Bette Paige, the sweater collection founded in 1996 by Betty Kim and William Sung, was acquired by El Monte, Calif.–based Vibes Base Group Corp., owners of the Standards & Practices young contemporary denim brand.

In the deal, finalized on Aug. 1, Vibes Base acquired the trademark and intellectual property of Bette Paige, and Kim and Sung have joined Vibes Base to continue running the brand, said Steve Hagstrom, vice president and general manager of Vibes Base.

Vibes Base specializes in bottoms and denim for the juniors and young contemporary market. Bette Paige will fill a void in the company’s lineup for tops for the contemporary market.

“I think they are the missing piece,” said Peterson Zhu, president and chief executive officer of Vibes Base.

Zhu was introduced to the Bette Paige brand through Hagstrom, who knew longtime Bette Paige executive Phyllis Cohen, who is also joining Vibes Base.

The two companies met in early June and quickly finalized the deal.

“There are times when you know it’s right,” said Hagstrom, who joined Vibes Base six years ago after many years working for retail chains such as JCPenney and Anchor Blue.

Siblings Kim and Sung founded Bette Paige in 1996. The company originally produced sweaters for the contemporary market entirely in the United States using 45 Stoll knitting machines running at the company’s City of Industry, Calif., headquarters. But in 2004, Kim and Sung sold the machines and moved production to China.

Bette Paige was successful with sweaters in the contemporary market, but the market was too small and we wanted to grow,” Sung said. “For contemporary sweaters, [the orders are primarily] small units. That is still a challenge.”

The sweater maker also took on more private-label business for other apparel brands and retail chains.

Bette Paige’s business model is a good fit with Vibes Base, which produces a mix of about 25 percent branded and 75 percent private-label apparel out of four company-owned factories in China.

Peterson Zhu’s brother, Victor, founded Vibes Base in 1990 as an extension of his manufacturing business in China, which launched in 1982. Peterson Zhu joined the company in 1994 and took over the business when his brother returned to China.

With the deal, Vibes Base is hoping to capitalize on Bette Paige’s position in the contemporary market and its distribution to specialty stores. By bringing Kim, Sung and Cohen on board—to oversee design, production and sales, respectively—Vibes Base hopes to capitalize on the trio’s longstanding knowledge of the sweater business.

“There is no yarn Betty doesn’t know,” Cohen said. “She has a sense about yarns and what works.”

It was Sung who created the original Bette Paige yarn—a rayon/nylon/spandex blend that yielded a soft, dense knit with exceptional stretch. In 1998, the label was nominated in 1998 for the “Rising Star” award by the California Mart (now called the California Market Center) and featured in a runway show at the awards event in Beverly Hills.

Today, the company knits a wide range of yarns, including filament rayon, cashmere and silk blends.

Kim has plans to expand into other categories. “My next goal is dresses,” she said, adding that eventually she would like to license the brand into new products.

The next step for Bette Paige is to launch the brand’s website, which will include an e-commerce component. The company has hired sales representation in New York and Los Angeles. In September, Bette Paige showed at Coterie in New York, and the company plans to show at Intermezzo Collections in New York in January.

“We need to form the right relationships to reach out to a larger audience,” Hagstrom said.—Alison A. Nieder