McGee & Co.

The first products McGee & Co. designed for itself were throw pillows, and the CEO sewed them. Syd McGee wrote in Utah Business that his mother taught him to sew in high school, so he drew the patterns on a computer and stitched them by hand in a spare bedroom. That first set led to more textiles, and eventually to furniture the company designs and has manufactured. The shop is now run from Draper.

Shea and Syd McGee met in Utah as college students and moved to Southern California, where Syd grew up. Shea took design classes at a community college and shared the remodel of her own home online, and the business started as Shea McGee Designs. In the company's own timeline, they sold everything and moved their small family to Salt Lake City to give Studio McGee their all.

The early years were thin. Syd wrote that they turned nothing down and worked nights and weekends from the dining table. They were "strapped financially but determined emotionally," he wrote, and cash flow was the sole goal.

The shop exists because of a supply problem. Furniture companies were hesitant to let the design firm sell their products online, Syd wrote, preferring their brick and mortar relationships, so in 2016 the couple launched a product arm of their own. The company says Shea helps design or choose every item in the catalog.

Television nearly went sideways. An agent from a production company working with HGTV wanted a sizzle reel, and the pitch, as Syd described it, had him swinging a sledgehammer and talking about load bearing walls, "things I had no idea about." Luckily, he wrote, it went nowhere. Netflix later made Dream Home Makeover with the couple as themselves, and nobody had to pretend to know where the studs were.

The show premiered in October 2020 and ran four seasons. Target signed a multiyear licensing deal for a line sold as Threshold x Studio McGee, and the company has since partnered with Kohler on bath and kitchen pieces. By 2024 Syd counted nearly 200 employees and a move from a 40,000 square foot warehouse into one of 300,000 square feet.

The honest note is about ownership. In 2021 Strand Equity Partners, a Los Angeles growth equity firm, made a minority investment in Studio McGee, the company behind the shop, and the Dorsey & Whitney release on the deal said the money was meant in part for McGee & Co.'s exclusive products. The founders still run it, with Syd as CEO and Shea as chief creative officer.

The catalog's bestseller list now includes the Lockwood, a coffee table in reclaimed elm that the company says was inspired by a vintage table in Shea's own house. A dining table version followed, built from reclaimed elm doors. For a business that started at the dining table, that seems about right.