I have seven year-old chargers which work fine. Neither you nor I are unicorns: there are plenty of others for whom it breaks constantly or never breaks. I'd love to know what it is we do differently.
Wrap it and unwrap it multiple times per day. Simply having two and keeping one at the office and one at home will 4X the lifespan of your charger, since you aren't wrapping it daily.
I'm considering making a mold so the Sugru looks nice when done and selling robustified chargers on Shopify. I already have a shipping business (MonthlyBoxer.com) so that part is easy. Thinking perhaps about offering a discount for returning the broken charger to us for refurbishing, so we can offer both new and refurb chargers.
Anecdotally the Sugru doubles the life of the charger cables (and makes your charger much more identifiable). I'd need to charge $99 to make it work, but it's fairly cheap to throw together a site and reply to the myriad forum posts saying "where can I buy a better Macbook charger" with a link to gauge interest.
I've done the same for my chargers as well (as in using Sugru). I love your idea of making a mold for better finish as well as selling the "robustified" chargers. I think there will be a market for this, but best of all, I think you can pull this off on demand too (in a way?). I also think the $99 charge is fair.
A quick back of the envelope calculation is as follows:
$80 for 85 watt charger on amazon [0] + $3 * 2 for Sugru on both ends of the cable [1] + $5.95 for USPS priority 3 day shipping [2] ~= $92
With this supply chain (if it can be called that), you can still estimate shipping the charger to the end consumer within 6 days (2 days with Prime shipping with Amazon + 3 days for USPS). I did not factor in the Prime membership and the mold in the costs though, but it can be factored in fairly easily. Also, I chose to use USPS shipping costs, naturally your mileage will vary because your company/business probably has higher costs (cool service by the way, and congrats :))
The secret to any cord's lifespan is: don't pull on the wire.
When people wrap the thin cord of the Mac brick, they either pull it nice and tight on the first wrap, or leave it loose on the first wrap. That's the difference right there.
Same thing with USB cables: to keep them healthy, grasp the hard plastic of the plug to insert/extract it.
I don't use the little wrap tabs on my Mac power brick at all anymore. I find I need the extender cord to reach a plug half the time anyway, so I just wrap both cords in a loose ~4" loop and use a little velcro strap to keep it together. My original power brick on a late 2008 Macbook Pro is still going strong.
Exactly. Right until the comments in this thread I've been wondering why so many people complained about Macbook's and iPhone/iPods chargers cables, now I understand. When I got my first Macbook, I realised rolling it nice and tight put a huge strain on the cable, and I got into the habit of leaving it lightly loose on that first one. And that was it, and since then I had forgotten until now. Also, I rarely (if ever) unroll more than 25% of the cable, I just use longer or shorter chords plugged to the charger if I need longer span.
