THE ORIGINS OF MAGNETPLANET
MagnetPlanet began life in 2016, and is run by a couple based in Warwickshire in the Midlands. The idea came from the time we bought our first house together, when we were decorating our very first home. One of us wanted to have video game and movie-inspired artwork displayed in prominent areas of the house to show off their passion. The other was somewhat less enthused about that idea.
Looking for a subtle way to showcase nods to favourite games and movies, we decided we would decorate our fridge with some geeky magnets. Small and subtle, yet quirky and fun.
However, finding magnets featuring box art for the Legend of Zelda and Street Fighter series proved difficult. Nobody seemed to have them. So, armed with a newly-purchased download of Photoshop, a desire to learn, and a supplier of blank fridge magnets, we set about working out how to make our own.
There were bumps along the way. We got the sizing wrong. The image quality was wrong. We learned a lot about resizing and reformatting artwork files in order to fit them into our designs. But finally, we had a Legend of Zelda magnet collection displayed on our fridge. A sightly nod to one of our favourite gaming series every time we reached for the milk.
OUR FIRST SALE
Before long, we had friends and family members asking where we got them from. We would happily relay our tale of our quest to create the ultimate geeky magnet range. One of our brothers asked if we might be able to make a few of their favourite Sega and Nintendo games from our childhood for their fridge at home, and suddenly we had our first customer.
The process was a little quicker second time around considering what we had learned from our first attempts. We still had the challenge of finding and enhancing the right artwork, printing and making it. It took a little work, but our first commercial set was done. We made an extra one for ourselves, too.
MORE THAN GAMES
Before long, we were asked to create some magnets away from video games. We were commissioned to make the complete James Bond movie series (24 movies at the time). This got us away from simply making video game magnets and helped us realise there are so many entertainment mediums people would want to show off their passion for – movies, music, TV shows as well as video games – and plenty of other things people are passionate about, too. Sports, countries, cars, brands, politics, places, the list is endless.
And on the back of that James Bond commission, we set about building, editing and perfecting the artwork for thousands of products.
BUILDING THE RANGE
As the range grew and grew, days became weeks, and weeks became months, and months became years. Procuring thousands of designs and manually editing and sizing them to fit the specific requirements of the magnets we used took an ungodly amount of time and effort. We wanted to ensure the magnets were ALWAYS the same size, so people who bought from us didn’t have to worry about sizing irregularities – something that would irritate the life out of us!
As the project grew, we discussed the idea in late 2019 of taking what we had, and building some way to make it commercially available online.
MARKETPLACE EXPERIMENTS
We launched our range on eBay in 2020, and we have shifted thousands of magnets on that platform. We had an ethos about fair pricing, and we stuck to it. Charging £3.29 per unit with free shipping seems absolutely fair. Covering our overheads and providing us with a small profit margin on each unit.
Though with limits on eBay on the number of listings we can have, and the number of units we can sell, we wanted to find a way to sell direct and build our own platform. A platform where PayPal and eBay don’t eat into our margins so much. A platform where we are free to showcase our range and grow it at our own pace. A MagnetPlanet.
MAGNETPLANET LAUNCHES
This site – this MagnetPlanet – is that platform. In the 4 years since that first magnet we made, we’ve noticed ourselves paying attention to the magnets on our friends and families fridges, and what it tells us about them. While the project began because of the passion we had for the subject, our passion has quickly become the fridge magnets themselves.
We can’t promise they will change your life. They won’t bring you eternal life, or help you find true love. But when you journey to your fridge, they will be there. Showing you a subtle reminder of the things you love in life. And if we make you smile, we’ll be a little bit happier. Send us your pics on Twitter or Instagram. We love to see them out there!
