Lies Verheyen’s web shop features her personally designed magnetic wallpaper, magnets and magnetic stickers. All in all very attractive stuff.
How did you come up with the idea of making magnetic wallpaper?
“As a designer I often use different kinds of materials, and experimenting plays an important role. In part that’s how I came up with the development of this magnetic wallpaper. It’s an excellent alternative for the traditional magnetic board, which you often have to screw into the wall. And for magnetic paint that ‘s not applied right sometimes, which leaves it with too little sticking power. My magnetic wallpaper does have that power because the iron particles are distributed evenly. We obviously have it in our own home and our offices and it works really well. As decoration (for kids’ drawings), as a mood board and we also have the chalk board version so you can write on it.”
Do you run the web shop yourself or does someone run it for you? After all, you also have a design agency.
“My husband, who’s a photographer, and I run the web shop together. For now we really enjoy the interaction with our customers, in part to get direct feedback and also because we still get really excited finding out where in the world people are ordering our magnetic wallpaper. And we go to fairs, where we also try to gauge the response.”
What’s your dream? Living off the magnets?
“It’s hard to say. I’d definitely miss graphic design. I think a combination of both is the best option for now. I also design for our collection, but that remains pretty limited. And building up a label like Groovy Magnets takes a lot more time than you might think, the business side of things also takes a lot of time. We launched our first line of magnetic wallpaper last October and we’ve been on a roller coaster ever since. At the moment we are mostly concerned with structuring the company. And in the meanwhile we try to carve out some time to make a second collection. Because we’ ll be launching that in six months.”
