The brand strategy at J. Willy Krauch & Sons? Good fish, clean wood and country manners.

There had been a mix-up. Months earlier, the wealthy Calgary woman phoned Tangier, NS, businessman Max Krauch and ordered some of his famous smoked salmon for her daughter's wedding. It was a special day-the bride's family would spare no expense, including shipping the East Coast delicacy from the tiny village on Nova Scotia's Eastern Shore clear across the country. But shortly before the ceremony was to take place, a grievous error was discovered. Max Krauch had been given the wrong date. A hysterical conversation ensued between the woman and Max's sister Alice, who also works at the Tangier smokehouse.

"The wedding is tomorrow!"

This was news indeed. Alice hollered out to her brother, who was in the back, salting and smoking fish. Did they have enough salmon to fill the order? He was pretty sure they did. Would there be time enough to cool it down, hand slice it, pack it, and ship it to Calgary? Should be-if the logistics gods smiled. She took a deep breath. The air was rich and tangy, smelling of wood smoke, salmon, and a hint of the ocean. She picked up the phone and spent the rest of the day on it… with Air Canada, with the Calgary taxi company who would take the fish from the airport to the reception hall, and finally with the woman, for whom the news that her guests would have fresh Nova Scotia smoked salmon was a unique salvation.

Welcome to the world of fine smoked fish, where the delicate product of hundreds of painstaking, back-breaking, patiently watching hours flies out the smokehouse door in a brief flash of telecom photons and jet fuel.

Max Krauch leans back in his office chair and smiles at the memory. There are dozens of stories like this, and he delights in the telling. He has filing cabinets full of cards and baby pictures sent by loyal customers; there are laminated thank-you letters in quaint typeface, two of them from Buckingham Palace.

"We do what we can to help people out," Max says modestly. He and the 11 other workers at J. Willy Krauch & Sons deliver smoked fish to their customers' doors, shrugging off the notion of minimum orders. Max has never sent an e-mail, preferring to speak to his customers by phone; in person is even better. That way, customers can inhale the hardwood smoke that hovers around him like a mantle; they can see his no-fuss clothing and experience the warmth of his country manners.

Walking into Krauch's traditional Scandinavian-style smokehouse is like stepping into an anachronistic world, the sort we zinged by a few decades ago. The lack of pretense is as intoxicating as that rich, woody smell. A savvy marketing guru might describe the success of J. Willy Krauch & Sons, makers of traditional Danish style hot and cold smoked fish, in this way: they live their brand. They provide a unique customer experience.

But in the smokehouse in Tangier, the notion of employer branding or experiential marketing seems new-fangled and smooth-talky. Max Krauch, who took over the family business following his father Willy's death nearly 20 years ago, describes their success in a decidedly simpler way.

"We start with the best fish. We do everything by hand. We try and be as helpful as we can to our customers."

In some ways, things haven't changed all that much since Willy Krauch started selling his smoked fish in 1956. Willy and his wife, Irene, and three young children immigrated to Canada from Denmark after the Second World War. The German occupation of his home country had rattled him, and he wasn't confident trouble wouldn't kick up again. He scraped along for five years, working at an abattoir in Berwick, NS, before moving to northern New Brunswick to work at a fish plant, then back to Nova Scotia, where he eventually settled on the Eastern Shore, whose inlets and cold, sparkling waters reminded him of the small Danish island from which he'd come.

By 1955, a friend of Willy's, a rumrunner he'd met travelling through Pictou County, lent him $1,000 to buy a home in Tangier, and start a business smoking fish.

"They were tough years at first," Max says. The rumrunner loan would not be the only money Willy would borrow to invest in his growing business and cover the costs of raising his now 10 children. To boost business, he began selling his smoked fish door to door, a service the firm has never stopped providing. In the manner of people of their generation, Willy and Irene put the children to work. From the time the Krauch children started school, they worked in the family business, serving behind the counter, delivering fish to customers, taking orders-and chopping, splitting, drying and stacking wood.

Wood is almost as important to smoked fish as is the fish itself. Over time, the smoked fish industry has grown increasingly mechanized, with automatic smokers, machine-generated sawdust and infrared timers taking the place of match, axe and wristwatch. As devoted as Max Krauch is to smoking fish the old-fashioned way, if he could find a way around cutting wood by hand, he'd do it to alleviate his aching joints.

"It's the wood," he says, shaking his head helplessly: 25 cords, cut, split and stacked by hand, 2,000 hours a year.

There are different ways of measuring it, but the result is always the same. The wood must be as clean as the fish. There can be no exposure to hydraulic fuel from tractors or front-end loaders, or other modern devices that would lessen the load and save the joints. So it's hewn by hand. Season after season, year after year.

"We were always doing it as kids," Max recalls. Today, the Krauch family members still working in the business-including four of Willy's children, one of his grandsons, and a daughter-in-law-plus up to four other employees, continue to pitch in with the wood.

But if the wood has been, quite literally, a pain in the neck for J. Willy Krauch employees, it is also the reason for the company's longevity. The family has learned not to take shortcuts, to stick to doing things the way their father taught them, even if it takes longer. Even if it means they'll run 300,000 pounds of fish through the old-fashioned, hand-tended smokers each year, versus more than three times that of their competitors. Smoking fish, Max says, is kind of like smoking a pipe-it's best when savoured.

In the busy season, salmon, mackerel, even eels, are delivered to Tangier daily from fish farms in New Brunswick. Workers salt, rinse and dry the fish. Then it's loaded by hand onto stainless steel racks, which are raised and heaved into the smokers. Hot smoked fish is cured in 103°C smoke for four hours to bring the fish to an internal temperature of 80°C. (Meanwhile, cold smoked fish cures at 15°C for 40 hours-four times as long as in a modern, fully-mechanized smoked salmon plant.) The fish is then cooled, packaged and shipped to grocers, fine food stores and individual customers throughout North America.

The number one factor that determines the quality of smoked fish? The quality of the fish itself, Max says. "You start with the best product you can find. It has to have good colour, the right fat content." In the 1950s, Willy bought wild Atlantic salmon caught off Newfoundland.

These days the fish is farmed. In fact, if there's one thing that's changed over time, it's the supply of fish, says Max. "For what we do, there's almost no such thing as wild fish anymore," he says.

Pictures of Willy Krauch from the New York Times, the Chicago Tribune, and other North American newspapers are displayed in the front lobby of the smokehouse. Thinking about his father, Max says that he wasn't a businessman in the true sense.

"He was just a guy who loved smoking fish."

Willy would spend entire days in a room with the ovens, mired in smoke, patiently watching the fish, tending the smoke, adjusting the heat. Hours later he'd emerge, smiling, reeking of a rich, full-bodied smoky aroma that wouldn't disappear for days.

Open a package of smoked fish from J. Willy Krauch & Sons, and you can smell it still.