Natural Products  April 26, 2016

New Boulder-based website offers shipping of Alaskan salmon

BOULDER — A seller of salmon familiar to those attending Boulder County farmers’ markets has begun shipping the meat via a new e-commerce website.

Boulder-based Wild Alaska Salmon LLC was able to launch WildAlaskaDirect.com through a partnership with eGourmet Solutions Inc., based in Kansas City, Mo.

“Shipping one-off was prohibitively expensive, so having a partner to ship our salmon is a huge benefit,” said Matt Aboussie, who founded Wild Alaska Salmon in 2010. “Working with that partner helped with fulfillment, to get the rate for shipping down to something sensible.”

SPONSORED CONTENT

Ways to thank a caregiver

If you have a caregiver or know someone who has been serving as a primary caregiver, March 3rd is the day to reach out and show them how much they are valued!

A 10-pound box of sockeye salmon currently sells for $149 on the new website, while a five-pound box lists for $89. The sockeye salmon fillets come in 6-ounce meal-sized portions and are individually vacuum-sealed, flash frozen just after the fish are caught, then packed in dry ice for shipping in insulated containers. Customer orders are shipped free via UPS or FedEx anywhere in the continental United States.

“We’ve had the website live for about two or three weeks now,” Aboussie said, “and we’re just starting to get the word out.”

Aboussie’s interest in the salmon industry began after he graduated from the University of Northern Colorado in Greeley in 2008 and took off for a summer adventure in Alaska.

“I was introduced to commercial fishing as a part-time crew member, just summertime seasonal work,” he said. “But I fell in love with it.”

The difference between dock prices in Alaska and retail prices in Colorado made the opportunity for direct marketing obvious, he said. He first sold the fish to family members and friends, but when booths at farmers’ markets led to brisk sales and positive customer reactions, Wild Alaska Salmon quickly became a full-time business.

Since then, he’s left his “day job” as a public-relations specialist at Carbondale-based Backbone Media each summer to fish for salmon in a sustainably managed area of Bristol Bay near the remote village of Ekuk, on the southwestern coast of Alaska north of the Aleutian Islands.

“It’s working outside, working with your hands, difficult, kind of crazy, working outside in a beautiful and sometimes harsh place,” Aboussie said. “The salmon run is massive and powerful. Millions of salmon return to Bristol Bay every year, and the harvest event is so fast and furious. It all kind of happens at once.”

Aboussie and his crew position 300-foot-long set nets on tidal mud flats, then wait for the tide to come in and bring the sockeye salmon with it. “We get big tides there, so we have a 30-foot vertical change in the tide where we are,” Aboussie said. Up to 10,000 pounds of salmon are picked out of the nets and taken to a processor in Ekuk that cleans, cuts and freezes it. Aboussie and his crew catch about 200,000 pounds of salmon within about a month and a half, sell most to the processor and then set aside some to bring back to Colorado.

“We store most of our product in Denver,” he said, “but we’re incorporated out of Boulder, and most of our sales are there.”

Wild Alaska Salmon sets up booths at farmers’ markets in Boulder and on Old South Pearl Street in Denver, and Aboussie said they also will sell at the farmers’ market at the Boulder County Fairgrounds in Longmont later this year.

But a lot of his focus this year will be on getting the salmon-shipping business up and running.

“I’m extremely excited to finally be able to provide a way for customers that love wild salmon to purchase from anywhere in the country,” he said. “The new site takes the difficulty out of ordering.

The meat is free from chemicals, artificial dyes and antibiotics, he said, and rich in protein, Omega 3 oils, amino acids and vitamins.

Dallas Heltzell
With BizWest since 2012 and in Colorado since 1979, Dallas worked at the Longmont Times-Call, Colorado Springs Gazette, Denver Post and Public News Service. A Missouri native and Mizzou School of Journalism grad, Dallas started as a sports writer and outdoor columnist at the St. Charles (Mo.) Banner-News, then went to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch before fleeing the heat and humidity for the Rockies. He especially loves covering our mountain communities.
Sign up for BizWest Daily Alerts