Samantha Skyring – Oryx Desert Salt
Small Business Entrepreneur of the Year®
What started as a 120km walk in July 2000 has grown into a multinational business that brings some of the best salt on earth to homes, restaurants, delis and retailers around the world.
On her seven-day trek through the Namib Desert to the Skeleton Coast, Samantha Skyring had several powerful and remarkable face-to-face encounters with Oryx Gazella, also known as gemsbok. She also discovered the pure, unrefined desert salt that forms in an ancient underground salt aquifer deep in the Kalahari. Located beneath a 50km2 salt pan, this 55-million-ton resource is continuously replenished by three subterranean streams that converge there. The salt water is drawn up into the salt pan where it dries under the hot Kalahari sun, leaving behind uniquely nutritious and flavoursome salt.
It is fair to say that Samantha returned from that trip a changed woman. She sold her house and bought 34 tons of salt (“a crazy amount really…”), which she stored in a garage storage unit and started packing Oryx Desert Salt bottles on her dining room table.
The link between the Oryx Gazelle and salt inspired the name and logo of the business Samantha built. These animals can go their entire lives without drinking water as they absorb moisture through their hair and skin. They cannot, however, live without salt that provides the sodium chloride, minerals and trace elements vital for survival in harsh desert conditions.
In addition to working with a renewable resource – “We only extract what nature provides” – Oryx Desert Salt is known for keeping its environmental footprint as small as possible. Its grinder heads are high-quality ceramic, which means glass grinder bottles can be refilled and reused more than 10 times and still grind coarse salt and peppercorns as efficiently as when it was brand new. By charging more than two-thirds less for a refill box than for a new grinder, Oryx uses a powerful price signal to encourage customers to refill. The refill boxes and glass grinder bottles are also 100% recyclable.
“I am so grateful that, as a single mom of a toddler (with a lot to lose), I was brave enough to take that leap of faith,” reflects Samantha. “Because all these years later, Oryx Desert Salt is thriving globally and I have the most beautiful Oryx family.”