Meet first-time show vendor West Texas Lumberjacks. This husband and wife-owned wood-making business started in 2011, but it wasn’t until 2018, when their son took up skateboarding, that they breathed new life into their business and found a new use for the cedar trees on their family property in West Texas.
What’s your business and product(s)?
We are a very small woodworking business that primarily sells skateboard racks and are slowly adding in more home decor types of products. It is just my husband and I that run it as a side hustle as we both have other jobs. We are not a high volume seller. We individually hand make every product we sell. Our family has some land in West Texas where we harvest cedar. This is what we use to make our bookends, tables, and any other cedar products we have available. This locally harvested cedar is known as Red Cedar because it has a beautiful dark reddish purple core. Each product is unique and unable to be duplicated.
How and when did you get started?
We started in 2011. Back then it was just me (Mandee) working on it. It was originally named Legacy Fine Living and I bought old furniture and refinished it. It was dormant for several years as life got busy. In 2018, my son started to have an interest in skateboarding. I wanted a nice way to store the racks and protect them. I eventually decided on a design and built a wooden holder for them that displayed the rack nicely, protecting it and making it into artwork. After making the rack I thought it would be interesting to see if anyone else would buy them, so I listed the rack on Etsy. Soon after that listing I began selling several a month. To this day it is still our best seller. Parents love it because it keeps the room clean and skateboarders love it because they can display their racks.
What products will you be bringing to the show?
We will be bringing our skateboard racks as well as tables and other products made from cedar. The side table pictured was actually sold to a major TV production in LA in 2021, although we are prohibited from naming the show.
What prompted you to apply for the October show?
We’ve been somewhat limited by only being able to list on Etsy so wanted to venture into new waters. We have also been a little frustrated by fees associated with Etsy as well as a new USPS fee that added $15 to each order on top of what our buyers were already paying. I love going to An Affair of the Heart and thought our products may provide something new to the show that I haven’t seen before. We are so excited to see what will happen.
