A NYC investor found his Utah hometown suffocating. Now he says it would be ‘foolish’ to ignore.

The first time Logan-born investor Dustin Jones met Vivien Böhme, cofounder of the women’s retail company that shares her last name, he tried to persuade her to sell him the Utah business on the spot.

It was 2021, and private equity firms were “running away from investing in brands,” Jones said. But as the cofounder and CEO of Unified Commerce Group, he saw it as the perfect opportunity to invest in companies that aligned with the way the economy was moving, such as an uptick in spending on clothing and other personal goods.

Böhme, which was created by Vivien and her sister Fernanda — a duo who moved to Utah from Brazil as young girls — fit the bill.

“I went store by store by store and would talk to people about the name,” Jones said, “and the reaction was always affectionate. It was affectionate with, like, an 18-year-old, and affectionate with, like, my mom. It’s hard to build a brand that has real affection.”

Since its beginning in 2006, Böhme has opened 18 locations in seven states and has a growing online customer base. The retail business offers women everything from wide-leg and skinny jeans to floral dresses, skirts and graphic tees. The brand is meant to appeal to women ages 16 to 60, Jones said, with most of its customer base between the ages of 28 and 38.

Three years after her first conversation with Jones, Vivien Böhme accepted his offer. Jones, she said, was one of the few investors who saw Böhme as a “gold mine.”

Last month, Unified Commerce Group, which also has stakes in New York footwear brand GREATS, Canadian fashion brand Frank and Oak, and Los Angeles-based athleisure brand Spiritual Gangster, announced its investment in the business, and Jones returned to his hometown of Logan for the Sept. 27 grand opening of Böhme’s newest location.

Jones said women from a variety of Cache Valley’s rural communities attended the event — the very demographic he plans to focus on as he expands Böhme.

“I wouldn’t call Böhme, like, a rural community sweet spot,” he said, “but it definitely serves communities that don’t have to be as suburbia and populated as Salt Lake City or Utah County.”

Although Jones left Cache Valley for New York City after earning a finance degree from Utah State University, he has returned to the area annually and has witnessed what he described as an economic transformation. He remembered feeling suffocated by Logan’s small-town atmosphere and said he thought Logan’s Main Street would be “dead.”

“I am surprised at how economically strong Cache Valley has become,” Jones said. “Surprised at the real estate values and the way that Logan has reshaped.”

From his perspective, Logan and Cache Valley are poised for further growth in value and wealth. As that happens, he said the community will need more ways to ensure that wealth stays local and benefits the area.

“There’s a lot of opportunity for people to build more on the aspirational side of Cache Valley,” he said.

Böhme’s new storefront in Logan is a step in that direction. However, this isn’t the first time the women’s clothing store has had a presence in the valley — there was a location in the Cache Valley Mall before it was demolished this year. According to Vivien Böhme, the past success of this location is why she decided to reopen in Logan, where the mall’s demolition has left residents sometimes picking up shirts and jeans at grocery stores.

Initially, she wasn’t confident Böhme would thrive in the area, but the owner of Fashion Place mall in Murray, who was also the owner of the Cache Valley Mall, convinced her to consider the location.

“That was the luckiest of accidents,” Vivien Böhme said. “I would have never been there, like I would have never picked it, and that store has always performed. Always performed. Great leadership. The community really gets behind it. I have never had a problem with Logan.”

Now, Böhme has cemented its place in the valley, Jones said.

“Not being in Cache Valley,” he said, “would be incredibly foolish.”