Watch List: CordBrick
Welcome to the Watch List, where we highlight new, emerging, and creative consumer goods manufacturers and retailers that are leveraging technology for innovative purposes and results. Know a company we should have on our radar? Drop us a line.
Founded in 2020, CordBrick was designed by creator Nick Barrett — who also goes by “CordBrick Nick.” Here, founder and CEO Barrett gives CGT an inside look into the creative startup, which has so far secured $150k in funding, with an estimated valuation of $3 million. The brand, already recognized by the National Retail Federation and Amazon, has its eyes set on leveraging valuable consumer data and artificial intelligence to expand its reach and streamline processes.
How do you explain CordBrick to retailers that aren’t familiar with you?
Do you charge your phone? CordBrick solves multiple problems associated with phone charger cords — like preventing falling cords (it's a weighted cord holder); organizing many together (it has six cord channels on one weighted silicone brick); managing cords on-the-go (it shortens, wraps, and then unwraps cords untangled); and it even has handy uses for your phone too.
How does technology contribute to your overall growth strategy?
Our general market segment is electronics accessories, so as an electronics accessories company, we're seeing the market expand rapidly due to a variety of new electronics emerging. It also enables us as a brand to incorporate technology, less expensively as time goes on, into upcoming band line extensions.
- Also read: Watch List: The Ugly Company
What role do consumer insights play within your marketing and product development?
As a unique consumer product that fits into the gift and gadget category, we're finding a variety of reasons why people buy CordBrick. It seems to have such mass appeal that defining specific consumer segments (and marketing to those groups) has been a challenge. So, getting a better understanding of who our customers are — through their insights into why they buy, gift, or use CordBrick — helps us understand what drives their purchase and allows us to improve our messaging in ads and target the right groups who are inspired enough to take action and buy.
With some of the other products we have in development, the utility is more apparent in their design and look, so consumers should have an easier time understanding what they are without an explanation or video. We've found CordBrick to be a pretty visual product because most people wouldn't be able to easily guess all of the things it's capable of — or even half — without it being demonstrated or having it suggested as something they could use it for.
What’s the biggest tech challenge for CordBrick, and how do you plan to solve and scale it?
One challenge is how to incorporate tech into it. In that, there are a lot of ways that we could...which is pretty exciting. The plan — in all honesty — is to get some smart people on the task and go to work thinking it through. Every company's efforts are unique and it takes a long period of grit and determination to find the path forward at any startup.
Where do you see the most innovation in retail technology?
Obviously the first thing that comes to mind lately is what type of impacts artificial intelligence can have in the short term in terms of suggesting the best products for any given consumer and helping retailers scale down their operations to what I think will be much leaner and more efficiently run companies.
[More on AI: Generative AI and ChatGPT: How the Tech Could Overhaul the Consumer Goods Industry and Red Flags to Look For]
What’s next for CordBrick?
We started the year winning "Coolest Product" at National Retail Federation’s (NRF) Big Show in NYC, and being accepted into Amazon's Launchpad program for new and innovative products. After getting into dozens of retailers, we plan to expand our retail footprint and really ramp up the social media marketing as our funding round concludes this month.