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Park City Magazine / Summer-Fall 2008 / WeBe Bags

WeBe Bags

The story of how locals Tara and Angus Beavers started WeBe Bags reads something like a screenplay. Shortly after having their first child, the couple bought a sailboat named “Honeymoon,” changed its name to “Dirty Diapers,” and with baby and dog in tow, sailed the Caribbean from Puerto Rico to Granada. It was on this journey that they discovered something akin to buried treasure: a business idea to sell fashionable tote bags made from recycled sacks.

At one port, Tara and Angus became infatuated with the colorful totes that islanders peddled on the beach, made by attaching straps to Crème of the Island sugar sacks. The bag designs were rough, but the Beavers had an idea to class them up by lining the bags with bright, swanky fabrics and adding whimsical touches so that they’d look as appealing on the arm of a runway model as they would on a tourist. WeBe Bags was born, affectionately named after a Rastafarian-like phrase, “We be bags, mon!”

It’s hard not to be charmed by the bags — they are colorful, sassy, hand-sewn, and chic. Carrying one makes the fashion statement: “Sure I like my Prada and Gucci, but I don’t mind slumming; I’m comfortable enough with myself to wear a sugar sack,” Angus Beavers explains.

WeBe Bags are made from recycled flour, sugar, feed and coffee bean sacks from around the world, and some are even sourced locally from places like Millcreek Coffee Roasters. The Beavers still get sacks from the island where their business idea originated, from a leaf-smoking, Rastafarian friend named “Dreadly,” with dreadlocks down to his backside. He and “his women” collect the bags, wash them in the Caribbean Sea and dry them on a clothesline before shipping them to Park City. The sacks are then hand-sewn into WeBe bags. The bags are a “feel-good” product: they are recycled, can be traced back to small island communities, and provide incomes for a group of stay-at-home moms who work as seamstresses in Utah.

Today WeBe bags can be found in several high-end boutiques in places like Martha’s Vineyard and Telluride, and at the Bitter End Yacht Club in the Virgin Islands. Recently, WeBe Bags became the official bag of the Cannes Film Festival. Celebrities and musicians like Josh Groban and the rapper 50 Cent have also featured the bags at parties and fundraisers. The bags will soon be carried by major department stores as well.

Before becoming entrepreneurs, Tara worked as Francis Ford Coppola’s production partner, and Angus’s first foray into business was owning a handful of storied New York City nightclubs in the ’80s (the Zulu Club, Renaissance and the Surf Club). Though the Beavers’ sailing adventure inspired their current business venture, Tara admits the journey was a little crazy. One night she recalls sailing in complete blackness and being frightened by a distant light she thought might be an oncoming freighter. She banged on the cabin floor to wake up Angus, who was sleeping below. He came up drowsy-eyed to inform her: “Tara, that’s the moon.”

Tara and Angus share a love of travel and a passion for the Caribbean. “We thought, wouldn’t it be great if we could find a reason to do business in the Caribbean?” says Angus. WeBe Bags has afforded them this opportunity and has given many others a chance to hold a piece of Tara and Angus’s adventures in the form of a one-a-kind, recycled bag from a far-away place.