How it started
History
The company was founded by Iranian-American businessman Manny Mashouf in 1976, where he opened the first Bebe store in San Francisco during a time when three categories dominated the women's wear market: junior, bridge and misses.
The name "Bebe" is derived from the soliloquy from Shakespeare's play Hamlet in which the eponymous Prince ponders: "To be or not to be..." However, the company's name was "Babe, Inc." until it held its initial public offering in 1998.
Mashouf has owned approximately 55% of the company. It was announced in 2015 that Mashouf was to sell his 59% stake in Bebe.
In 2014, a Telephone Consumer Protection Act class action lawsuit was filed against Bebe Stores, Inc. The plaintiff sought to certify a nationwide class consisting of all people who provided their cell phone numbers to Bebe at one of its brick-and-mortar stores and subsequently received text messages from Bebe at any point from January 2010 through the present (the Class Period was later certified to begin October 16, 2013, when governing law took effect).
In March 2017, Bebe announced that it would close all stores in 2017, and become an online-only retailer.
From Wikipedia’s article on Bebe Stores, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.3