The Conjuring Lab Story

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The magic market is undergoing a profound change. We’ve been seeing the first consequences of it for a few years now, and we will likely continue observing them for a long time. Conjuring Lab represents a clear example of this shift.

In recent months, we’ve been hearing a lot about a new magic product called Synaptic, produced by Conjuring Lab. At first, the company’s name was somewhat unfamiliar to many, but the marketing behind it was effective—so effective, in fact, that nearly every YouTube reviewer seemed to have received a copy to talk about the product.

So when their team asked us to share their story in a special partnership edition, we decided to do it our way: by going behind the scenes of the new company everyone seems to be talking about.

We wanted to understand where it came from, how it works, and to see if their example can help us analyse the major transformations that have slowly made their way into the magic industry.

Conjuring Lab is a French company. Its first product, released in 2024, is called Akronym. It falls into the category of tech magic and mentalism: in the effect, the performer makes striking revelations based on which Wikipedia pages a spectator has opened.

The idea for Akronym had been circulating for quite some time between two members of the Conjuring Lab team, Auren and Yves. The turning point came when they met a third person, Rudy. That meeting marked the birth of the company: the three decided to combine their skills and launch Akronym under this new venture.

It’s interesting to note that both Rudy and Auren have engineering backgrounds. Rudy, in particular, left his job at a tech company specifically to become the lead engineer at Conjuring Lab.

The three explain that the idea of creating a company came from the belief that combining their expertise could lead to a successful project.

Yves Doumergue, in particular, is a well-known name in French magic. He's worked as a consultant for some of the top names in magic. We have previously written about Doumergue when discussing his most famous—yet relatively hidden—product, The Motherboard, for an edition we wanted to write on secret magic products.

The Motherboard is a handheld chalkboard that allows performers to make impossible revelations and is used by some of the world’s most famous mentalists. The success of this device made Doumergue even better known within the industry, and his presence at the head of Conjuring Lab has undoubtedly helped establish its status.

The fact that two of the Conjuring Lab team are engineers—with the perfect skill set for the world of tech magic—is revealing of how much the magic industry has changed since the early internet years, when Ellusionist dominated the market with its street magic tutorials and custom playing cards.

Doumergue believes that tech products are the ones that can spread awareness of a company’s existence most quickly within the magic world, but Conjuring Lab does not intend to be only a tech magic laboratory.

The three explain that among the many projects they are working on, some are tech-based, while many others are not.

More broadly, though, Conjuring Lab’s goal is to publish what they call “real-world magic,” drawing on Doumergue’s experience as a working magician.

Having a well-known face behind a company is certainly useful, and other companies have followed a similar path in the past.

The fact that Doumergue also has a large repertoire has allowed Conjuring Lab to enrich its catalogue by selling some of his own products on its website—items he had previously sold independently for quite some time.

I ask Auren, Rudy, and Yves what process they use to decide which projects deserve their resources. Although they explain that there isn’t a precise system, one aspect of their approach is particularly interesting.

The three explain that since the launch of Akronym, the company has used a “soft release” method—creating early versions of its products and testing them with a number of customers to gather specific feedback. Only after collecting feedback from at least a hundred magicians do they decide how to improve the product before releasing it on a larger scale.

One hundred magicians testing their products–that's a striking new approach for a magic company.

The context in which they put this soft-release strategy into practice is the Blackpool Magic Convention. Alongside selling products already in their catalogue, they present something that is not advertised and later gather feedback on it.

Promotion only begins once everything has been tested and improved. The three insist that you cannot release a product and simply “hope it works.” You have to go through several research phases, observe the data and customer feedback, and continually refine the product.

The product that best embodies this spirit is Synaptic—an electronic device that communicates information to the performer through vibrations, allowing them to perform revelations, memory stunts, and more.

There's even a mode that lets you win any Connect Four game.

Synaptic does not require an internet connection and does not connect to a phone. It is completely autonomous and looks like a tiny remote control. Depending on the chosen effect, the performer uses the controller's interface to input information and receive vibrations as responses.

Synaptic is programmed to perform several effects, and new ones will be released through future updates. At the moment, it allows the performer to reveal digits from a spectator’s credit card, recite any number of digits of Pi from memory, determine the day of the week for any given date, and more.

All of this can be done without mnemonic skills.

Initially, Synaptic had been developed as a remote control for The Motherboard.

This detail was fascinating to us. One of the hardest things about developing tech products for magicians is justifying the rather large development costs against what is, in fact, a surprisingly niche market. An item like this, intended for something else, but can now, cleverly, do more, or be modified to create something different or better, is a trend we're seeing in magic.

At that early stage, it was called FourSight Guru. Thanks to feedback from early customers, the team realised that Synaptic could be more than a single-trick device. They decided to expand its functions and the tricks it made possible, creating what it is today, after dozens of 3D-printed prototypes and around fifteen fully built prototypes used to test different shapes and controller sizes.

The three argue that while Synaptic allows for certain mentalism effects, it is also an excellent reputation-maker, enabling spontaneous demonstrations of memory that would otherwise be impossible without mnemonic training.

Doumergue reveals that Conjuring Lab has sold around 1,200 units of Synaptic so far, but they hope to sell more. The product costs €245 and is currently only available directly, though it was recently stocked at Ellusionist as well.

In our experience, 1,200 units of a product like this, at that price, is impressive, especially given that the item itself is covert when performed.

We often point out that most people who buy magic are hobbyists, which is why best-selling products are often true “toys” that can be played with without a spectator present. Although Synaptic doesn’t quite fall into this category—since it’s meant to remain hidden from the audience—the fact that it resembles a gadget worthy of James Bond makes it appealing to magicians of any level.

It is tactical and enjoyable to play with, and one striking thing about it is that, unlike many tech products, it doesn't require a Bluetooth or Wi-Fi connection.

While talking with the three members of Conjuring Lab, there is one aspect I can’t stop thinking about. The magic market is changing again, right before our eyes, in ways that will probably mark it forever.

The fact that, in a relatively short time, three people in France created a company that sold more than 1,000 digital devices to magicians around the world is wild.

The magic market is increasingly fragmenting into many small companies that build their own audiences and sell directly to customers, only later working with larger companies.

It occurs to us that Conjuring Lab has demonstrated something else–if you build a product magicians want, they will be willing to pay for shipping from abroad if that's the only way to get it.

In some ways, this perfectly mirrors what we're seeing at the industry's main wholesaler. Their recent products have mostly been generic re-releases. Meanwhile, their star creator, Lloyd Barnes, is now doing his own thing–selling high-ticket magic products direct to customers from his website in Wales, UK.

It is realistic to think that the new, smaller ventures we're seeing are not trying to dominate the magic market, but are instead attempting to bypass intermediaries and sell directly to an audience they have built over the years.

One might have sold a product to a wholesaler at 30-40% of the retail price. These days, provided your product is exclusive and well-made, you can sell it directly to the customer at 100% of the retail price. You can even charge less than you otherwise would, thanks to higher revenue per unit. In the end, these smaller companies can make bigger investments in new items.

Leveraging one’s own audience to sell directly can once again make selling magic profitable for a larger number of creators.

It is also interesting to note how many of these creators come from countries where major companies were previously less present. It seems this enables them to tap into a local market immediately.

Of course, publishing magic independently is not new in this industry. The difference today is that it is much easier to do it in more professional ways. For example, online shops are easier to build, marketing can more easily reach magicians worldwide at a lower cost, and so on.

When I wrote on One Ahead about the impact of tariffs on the magic market, I suggested that large magic companies would shift to a model of distributing high-ticket products from independent creators and small companies rather than making large, riskier investments themselves.

That is exactly what is happening today—and the fact that Ellusionist recently sold Synaptic may be evidence of this. The big magic brands still have the biggest distribution channels. They remain the first place hobbyists turn to and have far more visibility than smaller companies built around a well-known creator. More visibility means larger mailing lists, greater reach, extensive archives, and so on.

But what will happen when online targeting and marketing distribution get even better than they are today? Perhaps there are insights to be learned from the way Conjuring Lab sent copies to YouTubers and even asked us to write about them.

It is possible that, while we will see large companies continue to outsource high product development costs to these smaller brands, the big magic shops may feel it necessary to run extended discount campaigns (which they can more easily do at scale) and use their extensive archives through re-releases, ebooks, and rebranding classic effects in ways the small companies cannot.

In a world where magicians are increasingly willing to buy great products directly, there is one key way big magic shops can differentiate themselves at scale: free shipping.

The final interesting point I discuss with the Conjuring Lab team concerns the company’s origin: France. Not being an American company obviously has some disadvantages when it comes to reaching a larger market, but their local roots—and Doumergue’s reputation—certainly help within the French context.

They explain that among their customers, 30% are French, 30% American, and the remaining portion is spread across the rest of the world. This means there is still significant room for growth in the United States and internationally.

At the moment, they are looking for new partners in several countries. Doumergue explains that they prefer selling directly to a shop or to a group of shops in order to maintain direct relationships and build stronger human connections.