NEW BEDFORD — A former silverware seller with deep roots in the restaurant businesshas opened a shop in downtown New Bedford featuring unique prints and brands that encompasses the city’s rich history.
Salt & Sole is located on the backside of the Whaling Museum, on the corner of North Water and Centre streets. “I'm not trying to be touristy here. But there is a fair amount of tourism right across the street, for me not to open my eyes to that,” said co-owner, Laura Lanagan.
“I mean, the Whaling Museum sees 100,000 people a year.”
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Lanagan says since opening the store’s foot traffic has been amazing. “We can't be on a better corner. It's all women business owners. We all support one another.”
What's inside the shop
The store opened on Black Friday, this past Thanksgiving, and features products from candles, clothing, glassware to chocolates. The shop prides itself on New Bedford being the “city that lit the world” and is located only a block and a half away from the historic Rodman Candleworks Building.
In response, the store offers candles made in Massachusetts — all hand-dipped, poured and dripless. “When I went to the Cape as a kid, and we got saltwater taffy on Cape Cod, I just feel the same connection between the New Bedford Candle Company and coming to New Bedford,” Lanagan said.
There are 25 to 27 different colored 10-inch tapers, such as burgundy, cobblestone and black whale. Some are creatively displayed around a ship’s wheel hanging from the ceiling to look like a giant rainbow.
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The store’s clothing line features artwork by Nantucket’s Peter Van Dingstee. He is famous for his gyotaku prints. “It’s how they recorded the size of a catch in Japan before cameras were invented,” Lanagan said.
“You know when you were a child and put a leaf under a paper and with a crayon and you'd go over the leaf and you'd get your design?” she said. “He does the same thing but with a fish.”
Salt & Sole partnered with Dingstee’s Nantucket shop, Pete’s Fish Print, not only to carry his artwork but to be the flagship store for his apparel. Hoodies, short sleeve and long sleeve shirts feature Dingstee’s popular tuna tail design, striped bass, albacore and yellowfin tuna. There is clothing with “New Bedford” printed down the sleeve, too.
Also sold is a glassware collection by the German company Stölzle Lausitz. Salt & Sole sells martini glasses, brandy snifters, port wine glasses, highball glasses, Berlin beer glasses, flutes and wine glasses.
“And we have open stock on what we carry. So, in other words, if you were to buy four glasses and one broke, you could come back and buy one,” added Lanagan.
She just had to have this location
When Lanagan saw the location for Salt & Sole on the market she said she couldn’t take her mind off the business opportunity. The realtor turned out to be her sister-in-law, Kate McGregor, co-owner of BOLD Real Estate.
“I said, ‘Katie, I can't turn it off. I can't stop thinking about the shop.’ And she said, ‘Don't turn it off, Laura, don't. You've been successful and other things that you've done before,’ so I did,” Lanagan said adding she co-owns the shop with her cousin’s daughter, Melanie Dixon.
Lanagan, who is half Chinese and half Dutch, grew up in Fairhaven in the restaurant business. Her grandparents first owned Charlie Wong Restaurant and then Mattapoisett’s well-known Cathay Temple for 49 years. “It was a 150-seat restaurant, with a piano bar, and women wore furs and long gloves,” she said. “It was a place!”
Her mother, Sue, was the general manager. “She basically ran the Cathay Temple,” Lanagan added.
When Lanagan married, she moved to Mattapoisett and raised her three children. She had a business with Silpada Designs. “It was something like what you would know as a Tupperware party or a Pampered Chef party,” Lanagan said. “But it was with sterling silver.”
She was the No. 3 organization within the company, overseeing 1,200 associates in 38 states. According to Lanagan, her team’s annual sales for about 14 years in a row, were $8 million to $10 million.
“I had the opportunity to travel a lot, and one of the things that I enjoyed doing was taking a little something home from everywhere I went,” she said. “If you are in my home, you're going to see a piece of coral that I've bought from Hawaii.
That was a reason Lanagan decided to open Salt & Sole. She said she was hearing from people how the area needed more places to buy iconic New Bedford items.
“Giving people the chance to take home a souvenir such as a candle from the ‘city that lit the world’ is an experience for that person that's coming here for the history of the city,” she said.
“I want Salt & Sole to be part of that experience.”
