A Family Affair
Each member of the Walters family was born with creativity in their blood. After years of hand-making gifts and other creations for fun, they were encouraged by other family members and friends to take things one step further and begin officially selling their items. In 2020, the family business was born, and they began to start selling their products to the outside world.
123 WaltDesign is truly a family affair. Each member of the team is a member of the family, and each contributes their own unique style to every individual piece they create. Tracey handles most of the lettering, staining, and inventory, as well as managing their website and social media pages. Tracey’s dad handles anything wood related, and her mom does all of the hand-painting and lighting. All three of them collaborate on finding and up-cycling many of their refurbished products. The rest of the large family plays various roles in the business, and the children (and fur children!) play a vital role in serving as inspiration on a daily basis.
Originally, 123 WaltDesign was focused on hand-making their own products from scratch, but recently, they began to get heavily involved with up-cycling, and bringing life back into old items. Some of their other specialties are hand-made canvases, paintings, and high quality quilts, which are made by Tracey’s grandma. Every item they create, no matter what it is, is handmade, so no two items will ever be the same. They pride themselves on being able to deliver completely unique products that can never be mass-produced.
While participating in the Creatively Lancaster Maker’s Market, Tracey and her dad were approached by one of the other vendors who gave them a postcard featuring The York Merchant, which at that time was just about to open. They were excited for the opportunity to join this new creative community, and have a permanent physical space where their products could be seen by the public and sold in person.
Tracey and her family find much of their inspiration from being able to use the skills that they were gifted with to create new products, and ultimately share that creativity with other people. In Tracey’s own words, “WaltDesign was founded with a goal and vision that allowed us to utilize our love for artistic design and creativity, as well as our individual talents to create products that cannot be mass-produced.”
123 WaltDesign also offers customized products on a per request basis. To learn more about 123 WaltDesign and see more of their unique products, visit their website at www.123waltdesign.com