There have been ways to do without laces in sports shoes. Puma, which launched its revolutionary Disc technology 25 years ago, is resurrecting it now with a sleeker and lighter model of running shoes, using a more flexible steel cable to better adapt to the foot.
Lotto Sport Italia has been continuously updating its laceless Zhero Gravity football boot, first launched in 2006,.Adidas announced its own version of a laceless football cleat earlier this year and made it available to its sponsored players from Jan. 23.
And then there are the Hickies, another revolutionary system that replaces conventional shoe laces with unbreakable elastic bands that don't need to be tightened. Once they are fitted into the lace holes, they adapt to the wearer's foot and to its movements thanks to a special rubber compound developed for the purpose, turning any shoe into a comfortable slip-on. The system is great and durable, as the editor of this publication can testify.
Peter Mahrer, a former executive of Adidas, Puma and Lotto who most recently ran Under Armour's business in Europe, is confident that the global turnover generated by the Hickies will double this year. First launched in Europe in 2014, they more than doubled their sales around the world in 2015 to around $4 million. With each set of 14 pieces carrying a retail price of €15, that means close to one million more pairs of shoes fitted with Hickies in the past year alone. The sets come in various colors and can be presented on two types of space-saving displays.
Mahrer has personally invested in the project as a shareholder of the Hickies' parent company, called The Sports Solution. He is running its international sales operations out of a small office in Switzerland along with a former colleague from Puma, Ralf Puschmann. Japan, where Brooks' distributor is representing the product, has proven to be the best market for the Hickies outside the U.S.
In Europe, the product is faring particularly well in Germany, which has been singled out as a priority market because of the large number of independent retailers which operate in the country. About 200 Intersport stores are selling Hickies in Germany, and many retailers affiliated with Sport 2000 have adopted the product, too. Shoe retail chains such as Roland and MyShoes, which belong to the Deichmann group, have also decided to sell Hickies after a test made at ten stores in Germany.
Internet retailers have been selling thousands of Hickies in the U.K., along with a few independent shoe and sports retailers. More than 200 stores are selling Hickies in Spain, a country that is covered by a distributor. Agents are covering the French market, where sales of Hickies were boosted after a special promotion last April at the Galeries Lafayette flagship department store in Paris. A socks licensee for Diadora and Fila is covering the Italian market.
