Client research · the test case
Polymagnet — a deep-dive brief
Everything a marketing department needs to know about Correlated Magnetics Research (CMR) / Polymagnet — the technology, the products, the market, the buyer, and where the growth is. Compiled from four parallel research passes. Bottom line: a 5-person, IP-first company whose growth depends entirely on design engineers discovering them — running on a blog frozen in 2016. The opportunity writes itself.
The opportunity in one screen
Why this is the perfect test case
~5
employees — they structurally can't staff marketing
2016
the year their blog last published
120+
patents — real tech, real moat, poorly told
Licensing
their model — growth = engineers finding them
Polymagnet has a genuinely remarkable product and a story most companies would kill for — and almost no one is telling it. Their site has a great design tool and solid education, but the blog is frozen in 2014–2016, their social is dormant, and they lose their own generic search terms to resellers. For a company whose entire growth model is getting design engineers to discover and design-in the technology, that's an existential gap — and exactly the gap an automated marketing department closes on day one.
The company
Correlated Magnetics Research (CMR)
- Founded 2008 — the science of "correlated magnetics" was created by Larry W. Fullerton at his Cedar Ridge lab in North Alabama; publicly launched at an October 2009 press conference in Huntsville, AL. Trades as Polymagnet.
- Tiny and IP-first — roughly 5 employees, ~$11M lifetime funding (Javelin Venture Partners + federal SBIR grants). Co-founder Mark Roberts is Chief IP Officer.
- The founder is a story. Fullerton (1950–2016) was an ultra-wideband radio pioneer (founded Time Domain Corp.), reportedly 500+ patents. He applied signal-coding theory from wireless to magnets — and the spark was wanting to build a self-assembling toy for his grandchildren.
- Business model: license the patented technology + custom design-ins, sell Polyvision design software and MagPrinter magnetizers, and seed adoption with demo kits. Volume manufacturing/distribution is pushed to partners — Industrial Magnetics (Smart-Mag®) and Amazing Magnets.
- Contact: (256) 489-4444 · connect@polymagnet.com · Huntsville, AL.
The technology
Programmable magnets, explained
The core idea: a normal magnet has North on one face, South on the other. A Polymagnet prints many tiny polarized regions — "maxels" (magnetic pixels, ~1–4 mm each) — onto the same face in an engineered pattern. When two patterned faces meet, their fields add or subtract depending on alignment and rotation — the same correlation math Fullerton borrowed from signal coding. Change the code, change the behavior.
Engineered behaviors from a passive part, no moving pieces: align, attach, latch, spring, twist-to-release, detent, torque, shear, hold.
- Stronger up close — with N/S maxels adjacent, flux takes short loops right at the surface, concentrating force. On sheet metal, holding force can be up to ~4× a conventional magnet (one demo cites >250 lb vs ~40 lb — design-dependent).
- Shorter reach — and that's a feature — the field falls to near-zero within about ¼ inch, so far less stray-field interference with nearby electronics and no accidental grabbing. Enables uses where a normal magnet's long field is unacceptable.
- Made by re-magnetizing, not 3D printing — they take ordinary magnet stock (neodymium, etc.) and re-write it with the MagPrinter®, a CNC-style magnetizing machine, one maxel at a time — a patterned magnet in minutes.
- Stable — ~1% decay per 100 years, comparable to neodymium.
The moat: ~120 issued patents (2014), rising to 175+ issued/pending later. Crucially they cover three layers — the behaviors, the applications, and the design math + manufacturing method — so a competitor can't easily print patterned magnets without infringing.
What they sell
Products & pricing
| Family | What it does | ~Price |
|---|
| Align | Self-aligning to a repeatable seated position/rotation | $16–$36 |
| Attach | High holding force to steel/magnet across a design gap | $7–$12 |
| Latch | Push-to-close, sliding, spring-latch closures | $20–$36 |
| Spring | Non-contact repel/spring below ~1 cm ("soft close") | ~$28 |
| Twist-Release | Holds strongly, releases with a twist | $35–$38 |
| Detent / Torque | 4- or 12-position detents, drawer detents, haptics | $28–$44 |
| Demo Kit | One of each behavior + steel plate + viewing film — the conversion tool | $99–$149 |
Plus Polyvision design software (place maxels, see real-time force curves), MagPrinter magnetizers, and custom engineering. Material: NdFeB (N50), Ni-Cu-Ni plating, 60°C, 0.5″–2″ discs/rings/bars.
Data gap: quantitative force ratings (lb/N), MOQ, and licensing terms are generally not published on product pages — a real friction point for an engineer evaluating a design-in, and an easy content win (publish the force curves).
Where it's used
Applications
- Mobile / accessories — car mounts and stands that align and twist-to-release.
- IoT / smart home — snap-mounting webcams, sensors, detectors to walls/ceilings with alignment + easy detach.
- Tablets ↔ laptops (2-in-1s) — alignment + connection for keyboards/cases, and linear magnetic springs that tune the snap-in feel. This is the tech behind detachable-laptop "snap."
- Wearables — quick connect/disconnect with automatic self-alignment.
- Industrial — tuned for max strength on sheet metal (~4×), with contained stray fields, for attaching accessories, covers, fixtures.
- Also marketed into audio (drivers/headphones), automotive interiors, and medical devices.
Market & competition
The landscape
There's no separately-sized "programmable magnet" market — it's a niche inside the permanent-magnet market (est. ~$32–59B, ~8% CAGR; NdFeB dominant), driven by EV motors, consumer electronics, sensors, and medical.
- Conventional suppliers are the default fallback: K&J Magnetics, Master Magnetics, Arnold, Adams — big catalogs of ordinary magnets.
- CMR is no longer unique — other players now offer programmable/patterned magnetization: SDM Magnetics (China) and MPCO. That's the real competitive threat.
- Defensibility: moderate and eroding. The patent portfolio + MagPrinter + Polyvision + first-mover brand help, but the concept is being replicated and CMR's tiny size limits enforcement and scale. Awareness is the battle — which is a marketing battle.
Who buys
The buyer & the journey
Buyer = the design/product engineer who needs a magnet to do more than "stick" — self-align a connector, hold-then-twist-release, spring at a set gap, add a tactile detent. Polymagnets are a designed-in component, so the buyer is whoever specs the mechanism (mechanical/product engineers, industrial designers, hardware startups, R&D labs).
The journey: Discover (demo videos, PR, search) → Sample (the paid $99–149 demo kit — the "feel it in your hand" moment) → Design (Polyvision + the catalog) → Custom/production (via partners). Friction: the sample step costs money and the brand/pricing is fragmented across resellers; there's no obvious "request a free eval sample / talk to an application engineer" fast path for a qualified project.
The reality
Their marketing footprint — and its gaps
- Blog frozen in 2014–2016. Every visible post references CES 2015 / a 2016 patent milestone. No current cadence. This is the single biggest gap.
- Social dormant / underused — X @polymagnet (~533 followers, unverified); LinkedIn and YouTube exist but appear underleveraged — and those are their two most natural channels (B2B + demo video).
- Owns the branded term "Polymagnet," but loses the generic high-intent terms ("programmable magnets," "magnetic latch design") to their own resellers.
- No engineer lead-nurture engine — no gated app notes, CAD/STEP downloads, or sample-request funnel tuned to design engineers.
- Broken basics — the apex
polymagnet.com and catalog.polymagnet.com currently have expired SSL certificates (only www. works). An easy, credibility-restoring quick win.
What the department attacks
The first-90-days plan
- Application-note library — one page per function/use-case ("Design a twist-release phone mount," "Replace a spring-latch with one magnet," "Self-align a connector to ±0.1 mm"). Each targets a long-tail engineer search term and ends in a demo-kit / Polyvision / talk-to-an-engineer CTA.
- "Polymagnet vs. conventional" explainers with the actual force curves — the concept still needs teaching, and publishing the numbers fixes the data gap.
- Vertical landing pages (consumer electronics, medical, automotive, audio) mapping behaviors to that industry's problems.
- Revive the blog — 2–4 technical posts/month; kill the 2016 feel immediately.
- LinkedIn 3–5×/week (priority B2B channel) + YouTube 2–4 videos/month (their strongest medium is video) + repurpose to Reels/X.
- Lead engine — a prominent "request a sample / talk to an application engineer" path, plus gated design guides and downloadable CAD/STEP files.
- Quick wins — fix the expired SSL; consolidate the fragmented reseller/pricing story so search authority lands on polymagnet.com.
The metric that matters: qualified design-engineer leads and a shorter discover→sample→design-in path. Their meeting baseline was ~10 leads/week — a number this program is built to move and measure.
Accuracy discipline
Verified vs. flagged
Do NOT repeat as fact: a "NASA / Tesla / Home Depot / U.S. Navy / Missile Defense Agency" customer list surfaced once but could not be confirmed on any real page — two independent research passes flagged it as a likely fetch hallucination. Their site actually uses anonymous testimonials ("a consumer electronics engineer," "a product engineer"). Only the Industrial Magnetics supply partnership and the Home-Depot-via-Gator-Magnetics retail link are corroborated.
- Ranges, not single figures: patents (~120 in 2014 → 175+ later), funding (~$11.2–11.9M), employees (~5) vary by source/date.
- Strength multiplier is stated variously ("more than 2×," "up to 4× on sheet metal," ">250 lb vs 40 lb") — it's design- and test-dependent, not one fixed number.
- "Alignmax/Springmax/Holdmax" are not real CMR product names — the real families are Align / Attach / Latch / Spring / Twist-Release / Detent / Torque.
- Social follower/engagement counts and exact blog dates were not independently verified.