History: When Tim Talley traveled to Tokyo in May 2007 he came across a pair of sneakers laced with five different color laces. Upon further inspection Talley found that the laces were in fact full 36 inch shoelaces which made it very difficult to get the desired effect of varying lace colors. In June 2007 Talley named the company U-Lace, designed the logo and created a prototype using elastic lace and binder clips. Over the next seven months the prototype was tweaked and in December 2007 U-Lace filed for U.S. Trademarks and Design and Utility Patents. The New Year brought many milestones for U-Lace, in February 2008 the first professional U-Lace package was designed and in May 2008 Talley’s design won over other ideas to be used for actual production prototyping. Also in May 2008 U-Lace entered a deal with Re-Fuel Product Distribution to begin distributing U-Lace in Europe. June 2008 was a huge month for U-Lace, their first production prototypes were produced in three colors: red, white and blue. For over a year U-Lace tweaked their company improving it in any way they could and they caught the attention of Trendright Japan. U-Lace signed a deal with Trendright Japan in July 2009 to distribute U-Lace in Japan. By August 2009 U-Lace was being distributing all over Europe and Japan and in September 2009 U-Lace’s first ad campaign runs in Antenna Magazine and Sneaker Freaker Magazine.
Introduction:
U-Lace is “The world’s first and only modular, quick-change, customizing lacing system for sneakers” (www.u-lace.com). What this lacing system is; is individual elasticized lace segments which are designed to fit just a single set of eyelets in a sneaker. The elasticity allows the wearer to take his or her shoes off without having to