Tricky Kicks Pull a Slick Trick
Kizik shoes have laces but you (almost) never need to tie or untie them :)
I’ve never had a lot of manual dexterity—a problem for a lawyer/journalist who spends his days at a keyboard—and tying shoelaces ranks among my least favorite activities, along with folding fitted sheets or anything involving cilantro.
That’s why I jumped at the chance to try a pair of Kizik kicks. They’re active and casual shoes—some sneaker-like, others not—that don’t require tying or untying the laces. Yet they do have laces, rather than goofy-looking Velcro closures, which was how my previous go-to sneaks were outfitted.
How do they accomplish this slick trick? As a kid, I sometimes wore loafers, and would sometimes crush the back of the shoe as I stepped into it. That usually earned me a scolding from my Dad—”You’ll break the back!”
If only I had taken his admonition as a product challenge. That’s essentially what the folks at Kizik did. The backs of these shoes have plastic inserts that are specially designed to be crushed as you slip your foot in, then to snap back into place. Voila—tricky kicks!
How well does this mechanism work? Perfectly; it’s easy to get your feet in and out. But there is one small caveat: every so often—maybe once a month—the laces come untied on their own. So then you do have to tie them, which you can do before putting the shoe on. Kizik might want to add a drop of glue or some other invisible fastener to address this.
Also noteworthy: there are actually three different kinds of snapback backs to these shoes; some models use one and other models sport another. I only tried the Men's Lima, pictured above, so I can’t speak to the ease or performance of the other mechanisms.
Kiziks are available for men, women and kids in a wide range of styles and as many as 17 colors, depending on style, including vibrant reds, blues and other colors as well as blacks and a range of pastels. If tying and untying laces is something you hate too, click here to browse while scoring $20 off.
Full disclosure: this is a sponsored post—I scored a pair of Kiziks. But you probably already guessed that.
