The Quirky Cordies cable organizer is a simple and clever idea -- a spiral made from weighted but flexible rubber that can sit on your desktop to keep all those loose cables organized, including power cords, USB cables, cell phone chargers, audio cables, and headphone cords. Just slot your loose cable through one of the loops so you can bring some order to the chaos of all your electronic devices.
And the backstory on the Cordies is even more fun. We've all had flashes of inspiration for little gadgets to solve nagging problems, but there's no practical path to try to turn them into real products.
Quirky is a social network site for crowd-sourced products. The community rates ideas and then helps develop them, so Quirky can bring them to market. The kicker is that the contributors to each product share in a royalty stream from the sales, based on their contribution -- from the original idea to the industrial design, product research, product name, tagline, and logo design (see earlier post).
The Cordies idea was actually submitted in early days of Quirky (product number 11, for Cable Weights), and was finally completed and brought to market earlier this year, with contributions from 606 people -- You can explore the product history on the Quirky site. The submitter, Stephen Stewart, has influenced some 40 Quirky products, with 15 now for sale, 22 in presale, and 3 more in development. (New products are first offered for pre-sale -- enough people must commit to purchase them before they go into production. Pre-sale buyers buy at a reduced price, and earn influence towards royalties.)
The Cordies are now in full production, and are available for $12.99 in a variety of bright colors. The loops actually snap apart, so you can assemble your own custom sizes from multiple units.