LADUE, Mo. — A familiar family name is bringing a new “lifestyle” retail store to the St. Louis area this fall.
Hearth & Soul is a retail concept by Susie Busch-Transou, daughter of former Anheuser-Busch Chairman August Busch III.
The 4,200-square-foot store, currently under construction at 9640 Clayton Road in Ladue, is laid out like a home, with the furnishings, clothing and art for sale in addition to a gift and book selection. The rooms reflect areas of a home: kitchen, family room, dining room, bar, library, bed and bath, women’s and men’s closets, patio and a pet corner.
Busch-Transou calls the concept “hospitality retail.”
“Hearth & Soul is a gathering place that basically is reminiscent of a home,” she said. “We have a curated collection of special finds in each of those areas, and community engagement and event-ing are baked into who we are. I think because it's a home-like setting, it is a place that people love to come for gatherings. And it also gives relevance to the products that are there, because you can see them in their respective places of life and home.”
In addition to offering global and local brands of home goods and apparel, Hearth & Soul will be open as an event space for nonprofit meetings, book clubs and special occasion celebrations, Busch-Transou said.
Hearth & Soul also will offer interior design services and a wedding registry.Busch-Transou said the new store has hired eight full-time-equivalent employees, and doesn’t use a commission system for its unique retailing method.
Busch-Transou spent nine years in varying leadership roles at Anheuser-Busch, including with its Busch Entertainment and Busch Creative Services subsidiaries. In 1996, she and her husband, Tripp Transou, moved to Tallahassee, Florida, to buy and operate Tri-Eagle Sales, a distributor for Anheuser-Busch InBev brands, along with specialty beverages and spirits.
A discussion about “what feeds your soul” at a friend’s 50th birthday party led Busch-Transou to explore the retail concept.
She opened the first Hearth & Soul in Tallahassee in 2015, adding an Austin location in 2018. Both of those locations are in leased space, and the Ladue store is the retailer’s first owned location.
Busch-Transou is Hearth & Soul’s sole investor, but two of her key division directors now are profit-sharing partners, she said.
The Ladue location is slated to open the week of Sept. 12, pushed back from an initial August target date. A grand opening is scheduled for Sept. 14. St. Peters-based Duggan Contracting Is overseeing construction, and Mainline Group Architecture Inc. of Ladue is the project’s architect.
Busch-Transou said she searched for a retail space in St. Louis for about six years, never finding an existing building that fit her vision. When the buildings at 9636 and 9640 Clayton Road became available, she purchased it in October 2021, demolishing both structures and retaining the 9640 Clayton Road address for the new store.
She said she paid over $1 million total for both properties, which previously were owned by Manager of 9640 Clayton Road LLC and Trustee Nine Investments. In all, Busch-Transou said Hearth & Soul has invested over $4 million “in the community” here.
About 3,600 square feet of the Ladue store is retail space, and it’s built as a story and a half to allow the offices to be located upstairs. It also has some on-site storage for soft goods, and the store has off-site storage for overflow goods. Hearth & Soul isn't a showroom, since customers can buy everything they see and take it home, but Busch-Transou said the store will work with customers who want to order something slightly different than what's displayed.
She said Hearth & Soul's top sales category is men's and women's apparel, followed by kitchen provisions and barware, then furniture.
Read the rest of the story on the St. Louis Business Journal website.
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