Seniors began a business that brought in $250,000 a month: The Snorinator

Unlike many seniors, 72-year-old Lloyd Ecker and his wife, Sue Ecker, haven’t any particular interest in retiring or slowing down.

The Pomona, New York-based parents of three and grandparents of 4 established themselves as serial entrepreneurs in baby-focused ventures for a long time, starting with their maternity clothing company Beegotten Creations in 1983. Then they realized the worth that they had gathered by collecting the names and addresses of expectant parents and founded Babytobee.com, which provided “free stuff” to babies in exchange for data they gave to big corporations like Huggies and Johnson & Johnson sold. Johnson. Baytobee.com was sold to Inuvo, Inc. in 2006 for $23 million. The couple began dating in 2011 AllAboutTheBaby.comone other prenatal and postnatal database.

In 2022, Lloyd still served as CEO AllAboutTheBaby.com (He stays in that role to today) and he and Sue had the goal of bringing certainly one of their passion projects 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 a creative season that was in no way about rest, the Eckers also struggled with an issue all of them shared 90 million Americans: Lloyd’s snoring led to some sleepless nights. He had tried all the same old solutions, from nasal plasters to mouth tape. None of them worked. So he resorted to a cumbersome CPAP machine.

“I didn’t need a CPAP machine,” says Lloyd. “I wasn’t diagnosed with sleep apnea or anything like that, but my wife said to me, ‘Either you fix this or I’ll throw you out of the bedroom.’ So I assumed. I looked like Diver Dan. Very romantic.”

However, later that 12 months an article appeared announcing the CPAP brand recall; Particles from the filter have been linked to cancer. Lloyd dropped the CPAP machine – and was thrown out of the bedroom.

Lloyd recreates the “High Fowler” with a foam pillow

Desperate for an answer, Lloyd scoured the web searching for an answer. Ultimately, his efforts landed on the twenty eighth page of search results, where he discovered a little-known device developed in 1888.

Dr. George Ryerson Fowler had developed a tool that kept people upright and promoted oxygenation through maximum chest expansion to assist patients get well from lung surgery. The position became generally known as “High Fowler.”

Lloyd got down to recreate it and fix his snoring for good. He contacted a friend in the froth industry and experimented with about 20 different prototypes for an anti-snoring pillow before landing on one he was completely satisfied with in 2022 – christened the snorer. “From the moment I started sleeping in this thing, I haven’t snored since,” says Lloyd. “It’s crazy.”

The company is faced with typical startup difficulties and hits with advertisements

Despite Lloyd’s personal satisfaction with the product, sales were a special matter. The couple began the business with their savings, but encountered some challenges fairly quickly.

The product’s design, which requires people to sleep in an upright position fairly than on their back or side, has raised some eyebrows, notes Sue. People have to “somehow retrain themselves,” she says, adding that getting them to think they’re into it is dependent upon gaining exposure and increasing sales.

So the couple carried on. The Snorinator launched an Indiegogo in February 2023, hoping to sell 1000’s of units, and sold about 100.

They also tried to realize a foothold with ads on Google and Facebook, but without success. “We didn’t know what we were doing,” admits Lloyd. “We had never dealt with this before. So we went to an agency who said, ‘No problem, we’ll just run your ad.'”

The first major ad is withdrawn since it is “too pornographic.”

The commercial for the Snorinator went online on April 15, 2023. It featured the Eckers in bed: Lloyd within the Snorinator, Sue’s head on Lloyd’s shoulder, with a slogan that played on the concept viewers, like Lloyd, could stop snoring for all times in the event that they bought the product. Unfortunately, the ad resulted in an almost immediate ban from Facebook and Google.

“When we finally figured out what we’d done wrong a few months later, they said, ‘Sorry, your ad was too pornographic,'” remembers Lloyd. Apparently the straightforward bed setup was too suggestive.

It took about six months for Google and Facebook to show Snorinator’s ads back on. In its first 12 months of operation, the Snorinator generated $100,000 in sales. Then $200,000 the following. Eventually, nonetheless, annual sales fell to $10,000 to $15,000 – a discouraging turnaround from the early days.

After investing $500,000, Snorinator sees declining sales

By July 2025, the Eckers had invested $500,000 of their very own savings in the corporate and had failed to attain anywhere near the specified return.

Then the couple received a call from the producers of . The Eckers jumped at the chance to look on the show, arriving on set with Snorinators in tow.

“It was such an exciting moment because we didn’t know if we were going to get a deal,” remembers Sue. “We had practiced our routine, and then you get there and do it in front of them. After you do your 90 seconds, they start throwing questions at you. We knew all the answers because we had been in this business for two years.”

Michael Strahan and Lori Greiner spend money on the Snorinator

Sharks Michael Strahan and Lori Greiner tried out the anti-snoring pillows on a bed within the studio – and were blown away by the product and its comfort. The The production cost was $38 per pillow and was sold on to the buyer for $160. Strahan and Greiner offered $100,000 for 25% equity. The Eckers accepted the deal.

After the episode aired in October 2025, the Snorinator saw a rise in sales that month – about $250,000. However, since the Eckers still hadn’t quite cracked the code on Google and Meta ads and had no social media presence, direct-to-consumer sales began to slow again. In December of that 12 months, Lloyd began to doubt the corporate’s future and regarded going out of business.

“But before that I threw everything at the wall,” says the founder. The Eckers had a connection who knew someone who was “supposedly an expert at TikTok and Instagram.”

So the couple decided to make one last attempt at harnessing the facility of social media, redesigning the Snorinator’s website to incorporate other uses for the pillow (e.g. heartburn) and cutting the product price by about $20, despite initial concerns from Lloyd’s.

The latest strategy has paid off. On Valentine’s Day 2026, sales of the Snorinator increased from about five units per day to 30 units per day. Believing the rise was attributable to the reduced price, Lloyd called his team to apologize for his initial resistance. But they told him that it was all because of the social media expert: she posted a video on Instagram that received 1,000,000 views in a day.

From that time on, sales grew. Two weeks after the viral video, Snorinator was seeing 40 orders per day. That number rose to 50 in March after which to 60. By mid-April, The Snorinator was seeing sales of nearly 100 orders per day on several days. The brand averages around 3 million views on social media every week.

“Simple” videos enable quick business success

And the perfect thing about this quick win strategy, in response to Lloyd? He doesn’t know the right way to do it.

“They tell me to take my phone and make these videos [with the pillow]” says the founder. “They’re ridiculously silly. I do not understand it. They’re just easy. I adore it. After the business was almost gone, seven containers arrived in the following three weeks to replenish the inventory. It’s crazy and there is no end in sight.”

Now the Eckers are looking forward to taking the Snorinator around the globe. Lloyd trademarked the brand before appearing in 17 countries and says the corporate continuously receives inquiries about product availability from people in Canada, Mexico, England, Japan and other countries.

“I guess people snore all over the world,” jokes Sue. “We’re happy to try to figure out how to get the Snorinator to them.”

Unlike many seniors, 72-year-old Lloyd Ecker and his wife, Sue Ecker, haven’t any particular interest in retiring or slowing down.

The Pomona, New York-based parents of three and grandparents of 4 established themselves as serial entrepreneurs in baby-focused ventures for a long time, starting with their maternity clothing company Beegotten Creations in 1983. Then they realized the worth that they had gathered by collecting the names and addresses of expectant parents and founded Babytobee.com, which provided “free stuff” to babies in exchange for data they gave to big corporations like Huggies and Johnson & Johnson sold. Johnson. Baytobee.com was sold to Inuvo, Inc. in 2006 for $23 million. The couple began dating in 2011 AllAboutTheBaby.comone other prenatal and postnatal database.

In 2022, Lloyd still served as CEO AllAboutTheBaby.com (He stays in that role to today) and he and Sue had the goal of bringing certainly one of their passion projects 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.