From Jacksonville, Florida, Salt Life is Coming to a Beach Near You

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First, Salt Life was a tattoo. Then it became a logo. Now it is a lifestyle brand with plans to open stores from coast to coast.

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By Maggie Lange

On a blustery April morning in Long Branch, N.J, Lynn Mesler pointed to a Salt Life store that had opened six days before on Ocean Avenue North, across the street from the Atlantic Ocean.

Ms. Mesler, 59, who was visiting Long Branch from Manahawkin, N.J., said she had recently bought a bunch of Salt Life stuff online for her boyfriend to wear on a vacation to the Dominican Republic.

"I wanted him to look colorful and be comfortable," Ms. Mesler said, adding that she became aware of Salt Life because she had seen the logo frequently.

That logo, which features Salt Life written in a brash, pointy font, was inspired by a neck tattoo. (More on that later.) Soon after Salt Life was founded in Jacksonville, Fla., in 2003, its logo started to appear on bumper stickers and T-shirts.

Now, the logo can be seen on beach chairs, coolers and baseball hats; performance clothing for surfing and fishing; and even more human bodies. Jeff Stillwell, the president of the Salt Life Group at Delta Apparel, which has owned Salt Life since 2013, said that fans regularly send pictures of their logo tattoos.

Salt Life's logo can also be spotted on an increasing number of storefronts. The Long Branch location is the brand's 23rd store and its northernmost, for now.

In the coming months, two Salt Life stores are set to open on Long Island. Mr. Stillwell said new store locations are determined in part by data that shows where people are searching for the brand online. "Nassau County has the highest concentration of people searching for Salt Life in the United States," he said.

In the coming years, Mr. Stillwell added, Delta Apparel plans to open as many as 20 new Salt Life stores across the country, in Georgia, Texas, California and other states.

The store in Long Branch, like Salt Life's other stores (most of which are in Florida), is designed to evoke the brand's leisurely, sunbaked aesthetic. Stacks of neatly folded shirts are arranged on surfboards, and coconut-shaped candles are displayed inside a fishing cooler. Tank tops that read "Salt Life Reel Escape" hang on a rack propped up by harpoon guns.

David Pachanian, 65, from Marlboro, N.J., bought a black sweatshirt that he put on just after leaving the store. "It feels good for the beach," said Mr. Pachanian, a manager at a catering company.

Along with Salt Life's growth there have been dark periods, too. In February, about a decade after Delta Apparel paid $37 million to acquire the brand from its original owners in 2013, one of Salt Life's former owners, Michael Hutto, pleaded guilty to manslaughter after shooting and killing his girlfriend in October 2020.

Later that October, Delta Apparel issued a statement that read, in part: "Salt Life sends their utmost sympathies to the family and friends of the deceased." The statement also said that Mr. Hutto had not been involved with the brand since its acquisition. (Mr. Hutto, after pleading guilty, was sentenced to 12 years in prison.)

Jason Motes, 51, a professional surfer and surf coach in Jacksonville, became an ambassador for Salt Life soon after it was founded in 2003. He said that the brand has come a long way since its early days, when Mr. Hutto, his childhood friend, would pass out T-shirts at parties.

Mr. Motes said the tattoo that inspired Salt Life was born from a comment Mr. Hutto made about surfing. "He said, ‘You know, we lived the salt life,’" Mr. Motes recalled.

Not long after, Mr. Motes said, a friend who was a tattoo artist tattooed the words "salt life" in what has become the brand's distinctive font onto Mr. Hutto's neck and Mr. Motes's arm. (Mr. Motes said he wouldn't have gotten the tattoo if he had known the brand would grow as much as it has.)

Richard Thompson, 62, another former co-owner of Salt Life, described its early business as steady. "We would sell everything we made and just keep doing it," said Mr. Thompson, who is now a general contractor in Jacksonville Beach, Fla.

By 2010, the brand was selling fishing gear as well as beach clothes and bumper stickers, and its logo and name had become popular enough that it dedicated a small team to monitor the market for imitators. (Among them: Swamp Life, Hunt Life and Malt Life.) "Our attorneys set us up with software that would search the internet for anything containing ‘salt’ or ‘life’ or anything in between," Mr. Thompson said. "At that point, we began to copyright our art and logos."

Back then, Salt Life products were sold on its website and at other stores, including Bass Pro Shops and Dick's Sporting Goods. The brand's first store opened in 2012, in Jacksonville Beach.

When Delta Apparel acquired Salt Life in 2013, Mr. Stillwell said a priority was to reach a larger audience than the "extremely hard-core fishermen" who had already become fans of the brand. "We toned a few things down," he added, such as graphics that featured fish guts. "It was a little too aggressive."

Car decals remain a Salt Life staple. Starting at $8, they feature various beachy details, including mermaids, palm trees and sharks. Mr. Stillwell said that the vinyl used to make the decals is tested in a lab with conditions that mimic the sun in Miami, to minimize fading.

Kathleen Barto, the marketing manager of Sea Gear Marine in Cape May, N.J., which sells Salt Life products, said the brand has become popular at her store for its prices — many T-shirts cost less than $30; performance shirts start at about $40 — and its graphic design. Ms. Barto described fans of the brand that she has met as "boat to bar" people, who like to go on their friends’ boat and then to happy hours.

Dena Davis, 40, an aesthetician in Longview, Texas, learned about Salt Life through her brother, who had one of its stickers on his car. Ms. Davis, who spends her free time boating and competing in bass-fishing tournaments, said she loves the brand's shirts, which she wears at fishing competitions. "The style is perfection," she said, "like vacation."

"My family has generations of fishermen," Ms Davis added. "We are Salt Life."

Allen Cobbs, 57, a sales manager in Fort Walton Beach, Fla., lives near a Salt Life outlet store in Destin, Fla. The customers he has seen shopping there aren't always into fishing, he said, adding that some seem to like the brand for its style.

Mr. Cobbs said that he is always on the beach in some way, whether fishing or lounging or exercising. "Salt Life has kind of encompassed everything that I do," he said. "For me, the words mean a lot."

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