I didn't open The Salty Babe because I saw a gap in the market. I opened it because Newport had nothing that looked like me.

I spent twelve years in the surf industry, traveling the world, selling product for other people's brands, absorbing how different cultures wore their lives. I came home with a head full of ideas and a closet that didn't exist yet in Rhode Island. So I built it.

January 2017. Four hundred square feet on Thames Street. The worst possible month to open a retail store in New England, under a name, Balance on Thames, that confused everyone, including me. But within two months, every piece of swimwear sold out. The market spoke. I listened.

We moved. We grew. We renamed. And then one afternoon, we made a tee shirt with "The Salty Babe" on the front and "The Ocean Made Me Salty" on the back. It wasn't a marketing decision. It was a confession. The ocean had shaped me: made me curious, worldly, free, and rooted all at once. That phrase became our North Star, the way a good brand name should. It named everything we already were.

In 2023, our family followed the same pull our customers feel every summer, toward Hawaii, toward warmth, toward something true. We found our space in Kailua. Two flagships. Two very different coasts. One identity.