Lauren Levy and Lawrence Scheer invented a category. When they launched Magnetic Me in 2010, baby clothes still closed the way they had for a century—snaps, buttons, and Velcro that parents wrestled with at every change. Fifteen years later, the brand has 50 employees, a patented magnetic-closure system, and a line that runs from onesies to adult pajamas. It got there without a dollar of outside money.
Levy and Scheer, college friends before they were business partners, have been the company’s only investors from day one, profitable since 2012, and deliberately conservative the whole way. Here, the cofounders explain how patient R&D, day jobs held longer than pride would prefer, and a strict focus on cash flow let them build a lasting business on their own terms.
On the diaper change that sparked the idea:
Lauren: My sister had a baby—the first grandkid in our family in a long time. I went out to her house in New Jersey, and I’m the aunt, so I want to do everything: feed him, change him, all of it. At feeding time I went to put a Velcro bib on him and he was fighting me. I thought, Why are you fighting me? It’s just a bib. Then I saw the Velcro was pulling out his little red hair. It was hurting him.
Afterward, I went to change him. My sister had set up the changing table right by the front door, which was drafty, and there were a thousand snaps. I couldn’t line them up, he was screaming because he was cold, and then my sister started screaming at me because it was taking so long. I kept thinking, Why isn’t this just a magnet? He’d get dressed so quickly, and we could get back to the fun stuff. It hit me like a ton of bricks that maybe I should explore this.
On spending two years on R&D before selling anything:
Lawrence: We started in 2008 and spent two years on research and development before we sold a single thing. It was really important to us that the product work, work well, work in the real world, and be safe. Those were our top priorities.
Magnets have been around forever, so we had to answer one question: Why isn’t everybody else doing this already? The answer is that it takes some work to make it work well, and for whatever reason, nobody had put in that effort. So we did the science. It was trial and error, talking to engineers—my cousin happens to be one—friends and family, our own research. We weren’t hiring anybody.
Then we had to make it safe. We developed a system called SewSafe. We stitch the magnetic fastener assemblies into the clothes in a belts-and-suspenders way: stitch the magnets down, then stitch the placket down again so they’re nestled in tight, and they’re also sealed in a little capsule. There’s really no way they’re coming out unless somebody deliberately tampers with it.
Lauren: I saw it as a total opportunity. Nothing had been innovated in baby clothing since the zipper, a hundred years ago—it was snaps and buttons. I once counted 30 snaps on one of my sister’s baby outfits. My background is in economics, so I’m always solving for efficiencies, and this could be amazing for parents.
On keeping their day jobs until the business could pay them:
Lawrence: It didn’t work the dramatic way people imagine. I hung onto the law job until I was no longer allowed to, and that happened in 2017. I started a new legal job in 2008, right when we launched into R&D, and I stayed there until 2017—though I’ll admit the last few years I was really mostly working on Magnetic Me.
I came full-time only when the company could financially support us. So I did it the easy, conservative way. No medals for bravery.
Lauren: We both invested together, and we both kept our full-time jobs the whole time—for me until around 2011. We took a conservative approach from the very start.
On staying the only investors for 15 years:
Lauren: We’ve always been conservative about how we built this. We’re still the only investors in the company—we bootstrapped everything. When we were first designing the product, we wrote something like a 150-page business plan, and the bank looked at it and said, “We just need seven pages.”
So we got loans, self-funded, and grew it that way. We knew this was only going to work if we could pay for our own growth. Maybe that was limiting in some ways, but it’s how we wanted to do it.
On letting word of mouth carry the marketing:
Lawrence: If you want to be successful, there’s really no substitute for having something that really works and really solves a problem. We made something that did, and in a way the rest takes care of itself. Word of mouth has been one of our best marketing tools—people just talk about it to their friends.
Early on, when we surveyed customers, we’d ask how they got Magnetic Me. Some bought it for themselves, some received it as a gift. But the most exciting group—a big chunk—said they got it as a gift and then went and bought it for everybody they knew. That was eye-opening, and it’s still largely the model today.
Lauren: Community has always been at the center of Magnetic Me. We started a heart-to-heart community to support families with babies with heart conditions and other medical challenges. We always wanted to be a company that gives back; we just weren’t sure which communities would embrace us. When they found us, we were very happy to embrace them back. We donate to NICUs and cardiac ICUs across the country.
On top of that, we’ve built a deeply loyal parent community, mostly on Facebook and Instagram. They’re not just our customers—they’re our advocates, an extension of our brand. Almost all our photo shoots come from kids in our community. They help us develop prints, they give us feedback, we innovate together. That’s been one of the biggest drivers of our growth.
On why cash flow beats paying every bill on time:
Lawrence: Cash flow is incredibly important. If you’re starting a new business, cash flow may be more important than other things—even paying all of your bills on time. I’m not saying don’t pay them; they’re going to get paid. But you really have to manage it and balance it so you stay solvent. I can’t think of anything more important than that.
The boutiques taught us this. They’re beloved, and they always will be—they keep the lights on. They pay by credit card, so they’re incredibly important for cash flow, and that’s given us the freedom to take some of that cash and reinvest it in other marketing channels. Our own site carries more margin, but the specialty stores are what made the reinvestment possible.
On choosing measured growth so they never have to lay anyone off:
Lauren: There have been times in business where raising outside money without making money was the thing everyone was doing. We’ve never done that. Our approach has always been: be profitable, support ourselves, don’t take on anything we can’t afford, and plan carefully. We don’t want to be a company that has to lay anybody off. We want measured growth. It’s a little old school, and I think that’s exactly what’s kept us successful.
It goes back to that women’s conference I went to early on, where they told us to take calculated risks. That’s basically what we do every day.
Lawrence: Lauren captured it. It comes down to the fundamentals—there are a few key rules around basic business principles you just can’t get out of, and we’ve tried to follow them.
Hear Lauren and Lawrence’s full conversation on Shopify Masters for more on filing their first patent, splitting the company into “the visionary” and “the filter,” and why a tactile product like theirs finally clicked with influencers.
