Sault Moves in on Tremont Street

Nodding to the classic New England-prep sensibility—chinos, cable-knit sweaters, sailing, the Kennedys—SAULT New England packs a tightly edited mix of men’s apparel, home décor, stationery, and quirky gifts into its 600-square-foot space on Tremont Street.

After about a year of planning, owner Philip Saul opened SAULT’s doors on September 8.

Inside, items ranging from button-down shirts to leather bags to homemade terrariums fill an earthy but clean space that highlights Saul’s interests in nature, art, and, most obviously, style.

“It’s about engaging the senses with the music, the scent, the feel of the space,” Saul said in a recent interview. “I’m all about the brick and mortar, the actual physical store, the shopping experience.”

Saul, a 10-year South End resident, spent 18 years in retail—eight at Banana Republic and 10 at Urban Outfitters, including tenure as New England district merchandiser—before he started seriously planning SAULT.

He admits to receiving business guidance from a friend, but now, Saul runs the store entirely on his own. When he isn’t personally greeting customers or tidying the store’s shelves, he’s planning future merchandise, calculating sales figures, or visiting antiques shows to scout items and concepts.

He embraced and reinvented many of the details left behind by the space’s —the dressing room’s aluminum walls hint at its previous incarnation as a food-prep room—but SAULT is a strongly personal vision.

“It’s about sourcing-out stuff that I like and that I believe in and trying to build the store around that,” he said. “There’s not one thing in here that I don’t wear.”

Saul credits his parents for endowing him with an eye for careful editing, a skill that plays out winningly throughout SAULT’s compact space.

“There’s a little bit of everything for everybody, but it’s not too cluttered,” he said. “What I try to do is make sure there’s a cohesive statement and that I’m sticking to a consistent theme.”

He reads style magazines and “hundreds” of blogs to inform his merchandise choices, but Saul says his selection process is largely organic, driven both by what he likes to wear and use, and by what he feels customers want or need.

One of the best parts of running the shop himself, he says, is the opportunity to see and listen to actual customers and use that direct feedback to inform business decisions.

“I don’t have a formula that I go by. If I like it, and if it’s what the customers want, I’m gonna give it to them," he said. "Or, if it’s something that customers are asking for and I didn’t think to get it, now I need to go get it.”

For the fall, SAULT is carrying a range of neutral-toned t-shirts, graphic tees, button-down shirts, denim, chinos, and sweaters for men, with items from Rogues Gallery and Penny Stock, among others. Saul calls it "Wilderness prep".

Clothing centers the front of the store, while the rest of the space is filled with home décor and housewares such as wall art, scented candles, and terrariums that Saul crafts himself.

Shoppers can also find stationery (much of which is New England-themed), coffee-table books, tote bags, and higher-end items like Jack Spade leather bags.

“It’s all about the mix,” Saul said. “It’s about being on-trend in ways but not falling into a category. It’s just about finding what’s going to be right for you and not following a formula.”

The South End was a natural choice of neighborhood for SAULT, Saul says, and he admits he felt a pull from SAULT’s current space when he first saw it.

“It’s one of those things where the space and the location are right and I don’t think that I could give this kind of feel and vibe anywhere else,” he said.

While SAULT is a bit smaller, spatially, than neighboring South End retailers, it boasts an open porch in the back of the store, which currently displays furniture. The porch reinforces the store’s element of the natural and, looking toward the holidays, Saul hopes to get Christmas trees or decorative wreaths out there.

Inside, a holiday-season focus for Saul will be providing interesting gift ideas for shoppers.

“I want people to walk in and knock five people off their Christmas list,” he said. “The woman in your office, the grandfather, the nephew, the neighbor down the street—I want you to find something for all of them in here.”

While Saul has created a basic website and a Facebook page for SAULT and dedicates a Tumblr account to the store, he does not have a formal public-relations or advertising agenda. He hopes, instead, that shoppers visit the store in person to experience SAULT personally. 

“I’m a very visual, tactile person—I want to touch things, I want to move things, and I want to be able to have people experience the environment themselves,” he said. “I really want people to experience the store for themselves, then tell a friend.”

Saul would consider expanding in the future, but for now, he is comfortable with SAULT’s space and is excited to see it develop.

“I don’t want to expand just to expand and make more money,” he said. “There’s so many different ideas and so many different concepts that I could go with for this, but for right now I just want to give the right product at the right time and have people like it.”