Our Story
A Name Earned.
Not Handed Down.
Seven formulas were good enough to sell. None were good enough to carry the name.
The Beginning
A Marina on the Sound
A day in June 2025 I'd spent hanging sheets of plywood off a scissor lift, twenty feet up, working for my dad.
That evening I drove to the water instead of home. Ordered a beer. Sat looking west at the Olympics with the sun still an hour off setting. Early summer. Not warm, not cold. The kind of evening this place does better than anywhere.
Before that I spent years as a spacecraft systems engineer. One of the missions I worked on flew to an asteroid, took a sample, and brought it back. Part of it is in the Smithsonian.
Out there you can't put anything on a scale. So we measured the sample by spinning the arm, once empty and once full, and reading the difference in how the machine moved.
You can't weigh a standard directly either. You only know it's there by what it changes.
My dad has been a carpenter for close to fifty years. Twenty-five in the union, then his own company from 2004 on. My mom runs the office and spent her career working for the state. Between them, one craft, done properly, for longer than I've been alive.
Nothing was handed to either of them. They built what they have.
Minkler is our name. My dad shortened it for his trade. Years later, without thinking much about it, I shortened it for mine.
What I wanted didn't exist.
My hair has never looked better than after a day on the water. Salt, then wind, then air. Dry, but right. Nothing on a shelf did that.
I was sitting in front of the answer that evening and it took me a minute to notice. The water I was looking at is in the bottle now.
I started that week. Kitchen island, a rolling cart pulled alongside, later into the night than I meant to be.
The first batch had eucalyptus in it. Wrong. I took it out and the scent found itself. Bergamot over Douglas fir and hinoki, resting on benzoin and resin.
Then six more formulas. Every one of them usable. I'd have happily used any of them.
None of them were worth thirty-five dollars.
So I didn't sell them. Fourteen months. My own money. Jobs and partnerships turned down, weekends spent on this instead of on anything else.
When I first told my mom, she said "oh, that would be cool." She didn't quite believe it. Nobody did. My dad doesn't even have hair.
She's since asked to come work here.
I made this to my own standard, on the theory that if I loved it the right people would too.
You'll know quickly whether you're one of them. It won't be explained to you and it won't be sold hard.
I have one life. This is the thing I'd like to have outlast it. A name my parents can be proud of, that I can hand to my own children, that means something in a hundred years because of how it was made and not how it was sold.
That isn't finished. It's barely started.
We didn't set out to compete with what's already on the shelf. We set out to make what should have been there all along, for people who already knew the difference.
What We Believe
The House Code
Calm
Luxury that quiets the noise. Never adds to it.
Authenticity
Rooted in place, built by hand, honest in every material.
Refinement
Restraint over excess. Precision in every detail.
Confidence
Quiet authority. No aggression, no overstatement.
Heritage
Made Where We Grew Up
Where the southern reach of the Puget Sound meets evergreen forest. I grew up here. MINK was founded here. Every batch is still hand-blended here. The water is drawn here. The Heritage fragrance was composed here. This is home.
The ingredients themselves come from wherever quality leads. Bergamot for coastal brightness, Douglas Fir and Hinoki for evergreen calm, Benzoin, Peru Balsam, and Vanilla CO₂ for warm resin depth. The fragrance wasn't designed to follow a trend. It was composed to anchor an identity.
A name is earned. We're building one worth passing down.