SALT didn't start in some Silicon Valley incubator with venture capital and a vision board. It started in John Ruppert's Maine garage at 2am, with him trying to avoid spending $250 on a paddle. Normal people would've just bought the damn paddle.
The first paddle was garbage. So was the second. And the third. But somewhere around paddle six, something clicked. It was still rough, but every hit brought him back to where he first played pickleball, with equipment that looked like it survived the cold war. 
John first met pickleball in a high-school rec-games class and loved it instantly, but competitive soccer claimed all his attention. Later that year, a collision with an aluminum bench severed his quadricep and slammed the door on athletics - pickleball included.

15-years later, John's in Harpswell, Maine with his wife, two kids, when he got invited to play pickleball again. He was stoked, until he realized he didn’t have a paddle. Rather than borrow one like a normal person, John decided the logical solution was to build one from scratch.

What followed was months of sawdust, epoxy fumes, and late-night obsessing. Pretty soon the paddle workspace spread from a tidy little corner of his garage to the entire lower level of his house looking like some sort of pickleball crime scene.
One night, John's wife, Shira, found him in his workshop, sanding paddles in the industrial-respirator-chic aesthetic. She gave him a look that said: "Start a business or start therapy." So, SALT was born.

Why SALT? Because here in Maine, salt's not just a seasoning. It's in the air, the water, the DNA of everyone who chooses to winter here. Salt preserves what matters and makes everything else taste better. The people here are the definition of salt-of-the-earth: gritty, genuine, and quietly tough as nails. Just like our paddles.