Is this your first email diary? Please read this first to make sure this email is your jam.
Here is my last email, a blabbering entirely about the word 'pussy' that had an overwhelming amount of responses like "this is your best email yet".. I have the strangest existence.
[britni] Hey Diary. Remember me?
It has been a minute, which I think is probably a good thing. Just like saying 'no' to your kids every once and a while, just because..
Kid: "Can I have some gum?" Parent: "No."
To me it just seems like if you always say yes, and if kids always get what they want, they will grow up into entitled monsters. I am living proof of this having been raised as an only, very spoiled, child. And I am like, okay I guess, but most certainly a handful. Just ask Casey.
I know what I am.
Anyway. I am glad to be back in the email saddle and I hope you're happy to be here, too. I've decided to come back with a little story for you; my very personal version of the Alaska Salt Company origin story.
This will be a 1 or 9 part series, a telling of the detailed story about how we started this whole salt thing and the events that lead us to where we are with this business today. The number of parts will depend on how wordy I get about all this. Y'all know me - probably prepare for lots of parts.
It was difficult to choose a starting place for this story. You know the saying by Carl Sagan: "If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the Universe"..
The Story of Alaska Salt Co. is a bit like this.. So I just decided to start with one of my most favorite parts; August 16th of 2014. Our wedding day.
This may come as a surprise to some of you, but Casey and I did not have a big wedding. To our mothers' chagrin, we didn't have any guests there either. Our friend Joe married us [love you, Joe], we had two witnesses and a photographer and that's it. and, we didn't tell anyone we were doing this.
We had a few reasons for wanting to get married this way.. we wanted our wedding day to be about us, and not about accommodating our family members and friends. But looking back, I think the main reason was simply that I am impatient. This stealthy wedding ceremony was of course, my idea. I informed Casey that we should get married this way and told him where and when to show up and handed him the clothes he should wear. I picked out my own ring and wore it around the house in the weeks before our wedding day. I would tuck it safely back into my sock drawer when I went to work.
Before you go on thinking this is some version of partner abuse, know that all of this came as a relief to Casey. He wanted to marry me too, and he could care less about the details. He was happy to check 'drafting a proposal' off of his list. What I knew was that I wanted to marry him more than I had ever wanted anything in my entire life and I simply couldn't wait. So once I had a verbal agreement from him, I got busy planning. A few months later we found ourselves standing on a hilltop in the most beautiful place on Earth sobbing through the vows we had written for each other.
^ I mean.. I think this face says it all.. ^
And yes. If you must know. I am crying right now. Even though I am in sweat pants, not wearing make up and working from home right now, I still feel like this girl in the picture on her secret wedding day, like the luckiest, happiest girl in the world.
Y'all. I love this man so much and this is why I started the story of Salt Co. here. We are business partners, but first, we are life partners. and if our business has or ever will have any success whatsoever, I promise you it is because of this partnership.
Is the foundation of our relationship success based on the willingness of Casey to just nod and smile and go along with whatever I'm up to? Probably. What ever it is, it works for us. We work well together. The execution of our secret tiny wedding is only one example of many, of how we have worked so well together to pull something off.
Our teamwork was really, really put to the test when we commercial fished together.
Fun fact, this photo was actually taken when our boat was on land in dry storage for the winter, hence the angle up at the sky.. When we fished, it was just the two of us, so there was no one around to take cutesy pictures of us.
When we got married, Casey was an electrician and I worked at a local non profit doing social work. Both of our employers were flexible and accommodated our summer fishing schedule. We spent our summers aboard the Harvest Moon, a drift boat in Cook Inlet, chasing salmon.
It was on this boat, in the middle of the ocean, where Casey would yell at me for the first and only time in our relationship and where he first had the idea to harvest sea salt.
Both are interesting stories that I will write about in Part 2 of this series I made up :)
Don't worry. I won't leave you here long. I realize this email wasn't exactly the "salty" or funny that you signed up for. But don't worry, if you're still hankering for some salt we have lots for sale :)
Dan, holding bricks of salt in the kitchen this week [insert snowflake emoji]
Like a lot of salt. As soon as I am done with this email I am going to eat a snack, then I'm going to make a giveaway post on Instagram for folks to try and guess how much this salt weighs. So if you're not in the market for buying some salt, maybe you can win some!
When sales are slow, we are rich in salt. It is wild to think that just a few months ago after our TikTok boom, we were oversold by hundreds of pounds of salt..
What. A. Fucking. Rollercoaster.
For now, we are trying to squeak by as we stockpile for what we think will be a really, really good summer in the Spit Shop. We haven't had a summer yet that we haven't completely sold out of salt, and honestly, I hope this summer isn't the first :)
In case this emotional, mushy, love story email left you a bit teary, like it did me, we've got a 20% off discount code for our adorable, floral hankies:
Get 20% off any hankies when you buy 4 or more. The discount code expires this Friday night, March 26, 2021 at 11:59 pm ALASKA time.
I keep one of these hankies in my purse but I have found that I use them the most to give as gifts. If something shitty happens to someone I know, I give them a 'For Fuck's Sake' hankie.. I guess, because I know it would make me feel better, I can't be alone in this.
Signing off at 12:27 PM!? A day email!? Life is full of surprises.
Love to you all,
Brit (the Salt Lady)
PS.
Last call on a Valentine's Day gift box!! We way overshot that one.. oops. [insert damn it, hand in palm emoji]. But they are still awesome for birthdays, anniversaries, ass-kissing gifts or just because :)
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