Parade Magazine | Yahoo! | Couple's Late-Night Fix for Snoring Lands on 'Shark Tank'
Parade Magazine profiled Lloyd and Susan Ecker's inspiring entrepreneurial journey from garage tinkering to Shark Tank success with The Snorinator.
Entertainment journalist Andrea Reiher recounts the compelling origin story: after years of Lloyd's disruptive snoring led Susan to banish him to the couch, and after exhausting every traditional solution from nasal strips to adjustable beds, Lloyd discovered the Fowler's position—a steep reclining angle hospitals use to help patients breathe more easily. His late-night experiment of stacking pillows to mimic this position finally allowed him to sleep through the night without waking himself up.
Parade details how this breakthrough led to "months of tinkering in the garage" with Lloyd shaping and reshaping foam into angled blocks through over a dozen variations before perfecting The Snorinator. The article emphasizes the pillow's simplicity and effectiveness: unlike high-tech sleep devices, it has no electronics or moving parts, featuring only CertiPUR-US certified high-density memory foam with a removable cover that supports the head and torso at a 60-66° angle.
Parade highlights the Eckers' hands-on, grassroots business approach—self-funding, filming their own demos, launching a crowdfunding campaign, and reinvesting early orders into manufacturing—noting they still run operations themselves with every Snorinator shipping from the same U.S. foam factory.
The article carefully notes The Snorinator isn't a medical device and doesn't treat sleep apnea, but instead aims for "one simple goal: helping people snore less so they can sleep beside their partners again."
