We’ve been working on a solution, I think we have a pretty cool one, and that’s why we decided to launch on Kickstarter.
The tangle sits beneath the desk, hidden from view yet weighing on your mind nonetheless, a rats nest of cords and power strips that turns any well-manicured office into a hideous den of anarchy. Every desk contains this mess — with so many high-functioning electronics needed in the modern workspace, a massive tangle of cords is unavoidable. The most common cord-control tactic is quite simple, use your feet to push the tangle as far away from you as humanly possible, then hope you never have to troubleshoot which cord is which. It’s not the most efficient method, but there just isn’t a lot of options…until now.
Three years ago, David Alden launched a successful Kickstarter campaign for the Recoil Cord Winder, a spring loaded device that allows users to quickly and efficiently keep smaller-sized cords reasonably contained. After transforming the campaign into a full-fledged business, Alden began playing around with other ideas in the cord management space.
“There are a ton of opportunities around cord management,” he said. “The more winders we sold, the more input we got from customers asking to solve this problem or that problem. The biggest request we got is the cords and cables under people’s desks and behind their entertainment centers.”
Because the Cord Winder was designed without larger cables in mind, people wanted a solution that can solve the mess beneath the desk — power strips, monitor cables, AC cords, you know the drill. After bandying about different solutions, Alden designed and created the Recoil Power Maze, an all-in-one remedy to sorting, removing, and simplifying the whirlwind beneath your desk.
“It’s such a universal problem that has really gone unaddressed,” he said. “We’ve been working on a solution, I think we have a pretty cool one, and that’s why we decided to launch on Kickstarter.”
The Power Maze was launched via Kickstarter on Monday and has already surpassed the quarter mark of its $40,000 goal. It’s a simple idea, but great nonetheless — a solid steel box that features a slot for a power strip and locking patches that you wind/organize each individual cord with. The result is a compact, aesthetically-pleasing option that surely beats the standard move of ashamedly kicking the mess of cords far, far beneath your desk.
“The barrier to launching a new product, once you have confidence that you have a product that people want, is getting it tooled up,” he said. “It’s a very expensive proposition, so that $40,000 will be for tooling and initial manufacturing.”
Alden hopes that the Power Maze can experience similar Kickstarter success as the Cord Winder, which exceeded its funding goal by over 1600%. Either way, he’s created a product that he believes in and knows that there’s a universal need for cleaning up the massive tangle of cords every person knows and fears.
“We definitely see the Power Maze as a really broad consumer product, but we also believe it belongs in commercial workspaces in a very big way,” he said. “We absolutely want to have an impact on the commercial office side of things.”
Published 7/10/2015
