At first glance, I wasn’t sure I was looking at the future of footwear. I stood on the edge of a cramped booth at the farthest edge of The Running Event in San Antonio. While dominated by running shoe reveals for the upcoming year, the show also housed a smattering of running-adjacent apparel, accessories, and — in the case of the “zipzōn” booth before me — whole new design innovations.
A dozen people sat cheek-to-cheek, jigsawing into the 100 square feet of booth space, each with their own pair of retrofitted prototypes. They all had turquoise adidas shoes that zipzōn had outfitted with its unique lacing system. These were not official adidas shoes, merely proofs of concept and hands-on testers for attendees to try.
A symphony of “click-click-clicks” played percussion, like a chamber orchestra made entirely of palm-sized zip ties. I watched dubiously as everyone continued to play with the unorthodox devices. To my left, Garett Graubins — former Global Marketing Director for BOA and now signed on as a consultant for the upstart brand — peppered me with compelling reasons to take the product seriously.
“It’s about half the weight of dial-based systems and a third the stack height,” he told me. Lighter and lower profile than BOA closures? That’s exactly the kind of performance claims serious runners want to hear.
zipzōn Closure: Laces of the Future?
Again, everything in the brand’s tiny booth was a prototype. And while I played with closing and opening the various iterations (one-, two-, and three-lace options), I have not had the chance to run in them — though I’m promised samples are on their way.
The system looks and feels like something between a zip tie and a classic ski boot buckle, albeit much smaller. A curved plastic track is smooth on top and notched on the bottom. These are the grooves that the zipzōn buckles bite into to create a secure fit.
According to Graubins, a zipzōn closure weighs about 3.5 g, and each click of the lace represents a 1.5mm increment. After I test-tightened the lace, I tugged on it in the opposite direction, at first gently, and then at full force. It didn’t break free. Preliminary, sure. But it did pass.
Releasing the lace took a little trial and error. Because my prototype lace was all white, it wasn’t immediately clear what I should pinch or press. But after a quick examination, I pressed the small tab on the buckle and gently pulled the lace free. No snags and issues once I knew what I was doing.
While Graubins said BOA worked plenty well for some sports and medical applications, he laughingly hedged on identifying any specific instance where he thought the zipzōn wouldn’t be the better bet.
zipzōn: What’s Next?
As yet, zipzōn has not confirmed what brands might adopt the new tech. But the brand did confirm it’s in conversations, and the general reception among other brands has been “positive.”
But there’s reason to believe this brand has traction. Its executive team is laced with former BOA higher-ups, including its founder and former BOA CEO Mark Soderberg, its general manager and ex–global category manager for BOA, Vin Connolly, and a handful of others.
And while there are no production-run shoes equipped with zipzōn to test, the brand said it can retrofit just about any shoe in order to provide testers an opportunity to try it out. That includes everything from hiking and running to basketball and golf. So I’ll have a pair of running, hiking, and daily around-town shoes in the testing mix very soon.
The brand so far has designs for single-closure systems (minimum weight), and dual and tri-closure systems for more customized fits. Learn more at zipzōn.fit.
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