The Lawyer Who Asked the Wrong Question
Jennifer McAllister-Nevins was the kind of attorney you wanted on your side. At the Legal Aid Society, she took the cases nobody else would touch. At the ACLU's Reproductive Freedom Project, she navigated the terrain where law meets lived experience. She held an MPhil from Oxford, a JD from NYU School of Law, and a BA from Penn. She had, by any reasonable measure, already built a serious career.
Then she asked a question at a playdate - the kind of question that seems simple until you realize nobody has a good answer to it. "Show me where you keep what you store for your children," she asked her friend Karla the Losen. There was an embarrassed pause. And in that pause, Savor was born.
That was winter 2014. By May 2016, Savor launched on The Grommet - the marketplace known for surfacing clever, well-made products before the rest of the world caught on. By 2024, it was on the Inc 5000 list at #3206, in the top 10% of TikTok Shop sellers, and stocked at Anthropologie, Pottery Barn Kids, and Nordstrom. The embarrassed pause had become a brand.
Sticking with it is more than half the battle. Having a good idea to start is important, but it's not what's going to make the business grow.
- Jennifer Nevins, CEO, SavorWhat Savor Actually Does
Savor makes storage beautiful. Not beautiful in a "hide everything behind matching baskets" way - beautiful in a "we designed this to live on your bookshelf and be looked at" way. The original flagship product, The Library, was a handmade cloth-covered box that resembled a museum-quality book, complete with illustrated labels and acid-free compartments, including tiny envelopes sized for baby teeth and locks of hair.
The company's guiding principle comes from the name itself: "To savor is to prolong joy, to appreciate the moment, to try to capture what's fleeting." The founders wanted keepsakes to be on display, not entombed in the back of a closet.
Since then, the product line has grown to 30+ SKUs: The Folio for important documents, fireproof emergency bags, the Vault all-in-one organizer, personalized story books, wedding and baby keepsake collections, and the product that broke through to a different kind of audience entirely - the "In Case I Go Missing" binder.
When TikTok Found the Binder
In early 2023, a TikTok trend emerged around something called the "In Case I Go Missing" binder - a preparedness folder containing emergency contacts, medical information, identification documents, and personal records, kept somewhere a loved one could find it. Savor had a product for exactly that. The internet noticed.
Coverage followed on The View. Then Slate. Then the New York Times. The TikTok algorithm, which had already taken a liking to Savor's products, pushed harder. By 2024, Savor was operating in the top 10% of all TikTok Shop sellers, a cohort that most direct-to-consumer brands spend years trying to crack.
It wasn't luck, even if luck played a role. Jennifer had been building a brand about preserving what matters - physical memory in a digital world. The binder was just the moment that made a broader audience pay attention.
They're how we connect with each other and with other generations.
- Jennifer Nevins, on keepsakes and physical objectsThe Holiday Season That Almost Wasn't
Every founder has a story where the business nearly didn't survive. Jennifer's involves inventory, a factory that could no longer fulfill orders, and a holiday season approaching like a deadline with no extension possible.
Savor's best-selling baby keepsake box was on track to sell out before the holidays, with replenishing from their original factory no longer an option. Starting from scratch with a new factory meant new timelines that wouldn't align with peak demand. The straightforward path was closed.
So Jennifer built a different path. She created an alternative product at a more accessible price point. That product became the Memento Bento - and it performed well enough to launch an entire product line. What could have been a crisis became a category.
"Failure is part of success," she says. She doesn't say it as a platitude. She's demonstrated it.
From Courtroom to Keepsake
The Lawyer's Edge
There's something that happens when a lawyer builds a consumer brand. They think in systems. They anticipate failure modes. They're not afraid of fine print because they've written it. Jennifer's legal and advocacy background shows in how Savor operates - the detail-oriented product design, the resilience under supply chain disruption, the ability to pivot without panic.
Her co-founder Karla the Losen brings product innovation; Jennifer brings what her team calls the "details queen" energy - the ability to hold complexity across strategy, business development, and creative direction simultaneously. She has personally secured the retail placements that put Savor on the shelves of Anthropologie, Pottery Barn Kids, and Nordstrom. These are accounts that take years to develop.
She's also honest about the parts of entrepreneurship that don't make it into the press releases. She rarely fully disconnects from work. The business is always running in some corner of her mind. It's a trade-off she's made consciously - and one she's made work.
Don't be afraid to get help. We are lucky to have kind and generous friends and families to lean on for this.
- Jennifer NevinsThe Specifics
- Jennifer co-founded Savor with Karla the Losen after their daughters became friends in preschool - the playdate idea that turned into a business while the kids played.
- She's known in her community as the "go-to mom" for stylish, efficient party planning - the same organizational instinct that powers Savor.
- The company motto: "Preserve the big. Celebrate the small. Savor it all."
- The Grommet - the marketplace that first launched Savor in May 2016 - is known for surfacing products ahead of mainstream retail. Savor was a fit.
- Jennifer holds three graduate credentials: JD from NYU Law, MPhil from Oxford, BA from Penn. She chose to build products instead.
- She struggles to fully disconnect from work - a detail she's candid about, rather than hiding behind founder mythology.
- Savor has been featured in Vogue, Parents, Forbes Vetted, Good Morning America, Today Show, Bloomberg, CNN, HGTV, Oprah Daily, The Knot, Slate, The View, and The New York Times.