GoKawiilKey Takeaways Lloyd’s desperate search for a snoring fix led him to an apparatus developed by Dr. Fowler.
With the help of a friend, he replicated the device with foam and brought the product to market.
Now, fresh off a Shark Tank deal, the Eckers continue to grow their Snorinator business.
Unlike many seniors, Lloyd Ecker, 72, and his wife Sue Ecker aren’t particularly interested in retirement or slowing down.
Image Credit: Disney/Christopher Willard. Lloyd Ecker and Sue Ecker.
The Pomona, New York-based parents of three and grandparents of four have enjoyed a decades-long run as serial entrepreneurs in baby-focused ventures, starting with their maternity-related apparel business Beegotten Creations in 1983. Then, realizing the value they’d amassed in collecting the names and addresses of expectant parents, they set up Babytobee.com, which provided “free stuff” for babies in exchange for data that sold to major companies like Huggies and Johnson & Johnson. Baytobee.com sold to Inuvo, Inc. in 2006 for $23 million. In 2011, the couple launched AllAboutTheBaby.com, another prenatal and postnatal database.
In 2022, Lloyd was still serving as CEO at AllAboutTheBaby.com (he remains in that role today), and he and Sue were aspiring to bring a passion project of theirs to Broadway — using funds from the sale of Babytobee.com to develop a musical based on Bette Midler’s material about an entertainer named Sophie Tucker.
Lloyd’s snoring inspires a business idea: The Snorinator
In the midst of this creative, very much not-retired season, the Eckers were also battling an issue shared by 90 million Americans: Lloyd’s snoring was leading to some sleepless nights. He’d tried all of the run-of-the-mill solutions, from nose strips to mouth tape. None of them worked. So he resorted to a cumbersome CPAP machine.
“ I didn’t need a CPAP machine,” Lloyd says. “I wasn’t diagnosed with sleep apnea or anything, but my wife said to me, ‘Either fix this or I’m kicking you out of the bedroom.’ So I thought, Okay, I’ll wear the stupid underwater equipment. I looked like Diver Dan. Very romantic.”
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