Mud Bay began in 1988 when Elsa Wulff bought a tiny farm store.
The store was housed in an eighty-year old building on Mud Bay Road, which runs west out of Olympia and spans the bottom end of Mud Bay, one of the southern arms of Puget Sound.
The enterprise had been flirting with failure for years, but Elsa had an immigrant’s sense of possibility, a never-say-die spirit and a wealth of practical experience in animal husbandry. Years earlier, her children had filled her house with dozens of species ranging from goats and geese to dogs and donkeys.
Early on, Mud Bay sold a little of just about everything, from locally grown oysters, pop tarts and folk art to hog feed, fertilizer and hay. The store also lost money. In its first full year of operation, Mud Bay lost $46,000 on sales of $277,000.
Recognizing that his mother couldn’t afford for the business to fail, Elsa’s son Lars left a mountain cabin and a half-finished first novel to become Mud Bay’s third employee in 1989. Elsa’s youngest daughter, Marisa, returned from Holland, where she had just finished an MBA, and joined the effort in 1993.
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