This Company Might Have Beat Nike to Making Auto-Lacing Shoes

Is this the future of footwear?

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by Brendan Dunne

Nike has promised that power lacing is coming, and it even made a step toward a laceless future with the new Nike Flyease tech.

But there's a New York startup that sort of already beat the Swoosh to the punch for this new wave of easy-entry footwear. Quikiks, which has been around for a couple of years now, features a hinge on the heel of the shoe that fastens and closes with a magnet. The shoes can be popped open by striking the heel against the ground, allowing for a hands-free exit as well.

Confusingly, the sneaker shown in the demo video here still has laces.

While the design of the sneakers themselves isn't particularly enticing, the tech could be an interesting one if licensed out to bigger footwear companies. There's a market for this sort of stuff too – Alley Watch reports that 250 million people suffer daily with getting their shoes on or off.

Alley Watch caught up with Quikiks founder Steven Kaufman, who explained that he got the idea for these easy-on shoes after seeing his son, who suffers from scoliosis, struggle to get his shoes on.

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