Our story

It started with a bad drawer

Like most people, we had the drawer — a tangle of cables and chargers, half of them mystery items that charged slowly, ran warm, or didn't quite fit anything. Buying a replacement meant wading through listings full of inflated numbers and lifestyle photos, only to end up with more of the same. It was oddly hard to just buy a good cable and know it was good.

KORD grew out of that frustration. The idea was simple: sell USB and power gear the way we wished we could buy it — the best version of each thing, described honestly, easy to find by what it actually is.

The plain-catalogue idea

We decided early that we didn't want to be another store hiding products behind marketing. So we built the opposite: a plain catalogue where every product has a code, the numbers mean what they say, and you can search straight to what you need. If you know the code, you're seconds from done. If you don't, the catalogue is built to be read rather than sold at. It's a deliberately unglamorous way to shop, and that's the point.

Choosing rather than stocking

Rather than filling shelves, we chose. Every product had to be the best version of that thing we could source, and it had to back up its own claims — a "100W" cable tested to carry 100W, a power bank rated in honest watt-hours. If it couldn't clear that bar, it didn't get a code. That's kept the range tighter than most, and we're happy with that trade: fewer products, none we'd hesitate to recommend.

Standing behind it

Selling gear we believed in meant putting our money where our mouth was, so everything carries a 5-year replacement warranty. If something we sold you fails through a fault, we replace it — simply. It's the natural end of the same promise: buy the right thing, and know we'll back it.

A small team, close to the product

We've stayed deliberately small and close to what we sell. The person who answers your email is usually the person who can fix your problem, and we like it that way. It keeps us honest, and it means you get a straight answer rather than a script.

Staying small on purpose

As KORD has grown, the one decision we keep making is to stay small and close to what we sell. It would be easy to widen the range, chase trends, and add layers of process, but every one of those moves puts distance between us and the two things that matter: the quality of the gear and the person on the other end of an email. Staying small keeps us honest. It means the person choosing and testing a product might be the same person who answers your question about it, and that decisions don't disappear into a committee. It's also why we can back everything for five years without nervousness — we know what we've chosen. We'd rather be a small operation that does one thing properly and can look you in the eye about it than a big one that does many things loosely. So far, that's worked, and we intend to keep it that way.

Where we're going

We add products over time, always to the same standard, and we ship flat-rate $15 anywhere in New Zealand. The catalogue grows; the bar to get into it doesn't move. That's the whole plan — and so far, it's working.

Want to tell us what you'd like to see? hello@kord.nz.