Top: Tim Emerick with his wife Robin, and their two sons Ottis and Ozzy. Bottom: Ozzy's beautiful hardwood cutting board engraved with a loved one's handwriting.
WELCOME NEW MEMBER -- OTZZY
TURNING EVERYDAY MOMENTS INTO LIVING KEEPSAKES
Dr. Seuss once wrote, "Sometimes you will never know the value of a moment until it becomes a memory." Tim Emerick, founder of Otzzy, couldn't agree more — and he is building a company around making sure those moments are never lost.
Recently joining Keystone Wood Products Association (KWPA), Otzzy is currently in its prototyping phase, crafting handcrafted wooden keepsakes. Rooted in Renovo, Pennsylvania, a small rural town, the company is an e-commerce start-up with a clear mission: to capture the moments that matter most and keep them alive for generations to come.
Emerick hopes to help revitalize his rural community by creating jobs and elevating the use of renewable hardwood — a valuable commodity with deep historical roots and present-day economic impact on the region. His approach is straightforward but groundbreaking. He is combining Real American Hardwoods, primarily sourced from Pennsylvania, with technology, creating what he calls Living Keepsakes™ — handmade keepsake products designed to be held, shared, and passed down for generations. With one swipe of a smart device, Living Keepsakes™ can recall a memory.
Otzzy's brand name is a tribute to founders Robin and Tim Emerick, Jr.'s two sons, Otis and Ozzy — a reflection of what the brand stands for: family, togetherness, and roots that run deep. The founders were both born and raised in Renovo, a once-booming railroad town situated along the West Branch Susquehanna River — historically a vital route for floating timber to Williamsport, the lumber capital of the world.
The business venture began in a garage and woodshed, running on satellite internet barely a step above dial-up. By day, Emerick is a licensed professional geologist. By night, he taught himself to be an entrepreneur, marketer, and hobbyist woodworker. In 2020, he opened an e-commerce Etsy shop and has sold handcrafted products online ever since — nearly 7,800 sales and counting, all custom made to order during his spare time. Scaling from a part-time operation into a full-scale value-added wood manufacturing presence in Renovo is the challenge ahead.
The idea for Living Keepsakes™ came one day when Emerick's oldest son kept telling him that his business ideas weren't going anywhere — drop shipping and affiliate marketing had failed. "Why don't you have your own ideas?" his son asked.
Emerick recalls glancing at a baseball photo of his two sons on the wall in that moment — and that's when the idea sparked. Behind his son's words was a truth: he needed something unique, a business model that solved a real problem.
To him the problem was clear. He had years of forgotten video memories of his two sons playing youth sports, buried and out of reach. Emerick wondered if those memories could live on, right alongside the photo itself?
Over the next several years, that idea developed into Living Keepsakes™. In 2024, Otzzy won the PA Wilds BIG IDEA Contest — a co-first place win Emerick credits largely to Happy Valley LaunchBox, with additional support from the Penn State Small Business Development Center (SBDC). Since then, Otzzy has partnered with Ben Franklin Technology Partners, which provided a seed grant for a mobile trailer unit to perform customer discovery and drive brand awareness. PA Wilds also provided additional support. Emerick also credits the KWPA for offering connections and support throughout the wood products sector.
He believes that being connected in the community has opened doors to industry leaders, sourcing, and technical guidance that he wouldn't have found on his own.
"We are incredibly grateful for the support," he says. "We are not manufacturing our wooden Living Keepsakes™ line at scale yet, but thanks to the KWPA, we now have a roadmap to get there. KWPA has helped us source hardwood material and lower our risk exposure as we work toward bringing value-added wood manufacturing to Otzzy."
At first glance, an Otzzy cutting board looks like a beautifully crafted heirloom — and it is. But each one also carries something more: access to Otzzy's interface, which lets customers preserve and upload cherished videos, voice messages, and photos, then connect those digital memories to their physical keepsake.
"A grandmother's laugh, a son's game-winning home run, the sound of an I do. — These are the moments Otzzy was built to hold onto," says Emerick. "Our interface serves as a bridge between the physical and digital worlds. Customers upload videos, photos, and voice messages through our platform. From there, we bring those memories to life within one of our handcrafted Living Keepsakes™ — so they are preserved and ready to be relived."
Otzzy is the first to bring this kind of memory-powered gifting experience to the market, positioning itself as a pioneer in an entirely new category. The innovation addresses a problem many of us share — losing precious digital memories to a forgotten hard drive, a cracked phone, or cluttered digital storage.
Otzzy is currently developing its product line of wooden Living Keepsakes™ crafted from walnut or maple. During this phase, non-digital cutting boards are available now at otzzy.com.
"Engraved with a loved one's recipe in his or her handwriting, a cutting board carries its own history — the grain, the growth, and the years it took to become what it is — long before it ever reaches a customer's home," says Emerick. "We are not just selling a cutting board, we are preserving the wood's history and our customer's memories together — so neither one fades."