By Denise Shoukas

TURNING SALT, ONE OF THE WORLD’S MOST ORDINARY SPICES, into a lucrative, luxury segment of the specialty food industry is no easy feat. But it is exactly what Naomi Novotny and Mark Zoske, co-owners of SaltWorks, accomplished when they started their company near Seattle in 2002. SaltWorks is a premium gourmet sea and bath salts company that supplies products to wholesale, retail and consumer markets throughout North America.

Personal, efficient service, a guarantee of quality, a comprehensive understanding of their salts and a strong web of supplier and vendor relationships contribute to SaltWorks success. It’s a climb that has not gone unnoticed. Just last year they were named one of Inc. magazine’s Top 500 Fastest Growing Companies of 2007, only six years after starting their business out of a spare bedroom in their house. Here’s a look at how they did it.

Laying the Groundwork
The sales and marketing expertise Novotny and Zoske brought to the start-up from their previous careers in software and water sports equipment, respectively, helped them create a strong brand image and message, but that’s not what determined their success. “You have to have a good product and be able to stand behind it,” Novotny explains.

The two first became experts on sea salt. Once they saw how different sea salts were than regular salts, they knew they needed to educate customers as part of their brand building. “When we started importing, it wasn’t only important to know that it was a certain type of salt, we had to know the region and how it was cultivated,” says Novotny. “Quality and location issues make a big difference.”

Creating the Brand
From the beginning, Zoske and Novotny knew that they only wanted to sell the purest salt at retail and wholesale. Focusing only on salt “gave us credibility and let us grow,” Novotny says.

Rather than approach the business purely from a specialty food perspective, they relied on their expertise from their prior careers. Zoske had extensive marketing know-how and Novotny brought a high-tech software viewpoint. Merging the two allowed them to communicate their message clearly and create an easy-to-navigate website, www.seasalt.com.

The internet was a key element in building their brand. “We optimized each page on our site to be search-engine-friendly to be sure that when a potential customer searched for any word related to salt they were directed to the SaltWorks’ website,” explains Novotny. SaltWorks educates under the Salt Info section, which includes topics from the history of salt to a gourmet salt reference guide, plus an education area for vendors and retailers.

According to Novotny, the website “is a constant work in progress. It is currently 500 pages and we add to it weekly.” She adds, “We create all of the content and images in house and use an outside development company, Heated Details, to do the rest.”

SaltWorks also does a lot of advertising through trade publications and recently started advertising in consumer magazines with full-page ads to better build brand recognition and connect with future clients.

Looks Matter
Translating a brand through logo and packaging design is an imperative challenge to meet. At first the owners thought it would be interesting to have a different look for each salt’s country of origin (they import from 24 countries), but ultimately decided that the brand needed to represent something more. So they created three lines—Artisan Sea Salts (packaged in distinctive squared jars with cork tops), Pure Ocean All Natural Sea Salt (completely unrefined and pure) and the newest line, Fusion, in which sea salts are naturally flavored through a proprietary process. “For the Fusion line, we had our own mold cut so the jar was unique to that product line,” Novotny notes. “Acceptance of the line has been quick because consumers are already educated on sea salt, so flavored sea salt has been that much easier to accept.”

Although some customers make the connection between the line’s distinct packaging and a high-quality product immediately, the company reinforces that message with its support materials.  “We created our own certification label on top of Artisan jars,” says Novotny. “We talk about it on our website and in our literature. It’s guaranteed to be what we’re saying it is.”

Quality Relationships Build Brands
Using premium materials has always been the company’s key focus. At the beginning, says Novotny, “we got samples in and realized there was such a huge difference in the salts. A grey salt from France could show up with feathers in it.”

That’s why the owners choose certified products, particularly those that are certified organic. “We’re so careful about how we bring all the salt in that it’s easy to stand behind it,” she notes. “When we tell a company we’ll bring in 500,000 pounds of salt for them, we’re guaranteeing the quality in that volume. We can do it because we have great relationships with our suppliers. We work with them, visit and make sure they pack the way we want. And we’ll implement different machines and various packaging standards for bulk.”

SaltWorks also stocks a million pounds in its warehouse and brings in much more. “It’s easier when it comes through here because we touch it before it goes to the customer. But the same salts that we’re selling to companies who use it in bigger products need to have the same assurance that the quality is there.”

Novotny believes that how you handle your customer service represents your brand as well. “A consumer may order grey salt and not understand that it’s supposed to be wet. We’ve found that helping the customer is the best way, by either sending a replacement and telling them to keep the salt or just returning it for them. We don’t fight those issues. In the long run, it’s better to have a good customer experience than to be right about it.”

Denise Shoukas is a contributing editor to Specialty Food Magazine.