By Eric Delgado, Co-Founder of Shoe Lace Supply
My wife and I started Shoe Lace Supply back in 2012, out of a UCF dorm room, under the name Rope Lace Supply at the time. The reason was simple: there was no company actually selling quality shoelaces. If you wanted replacement laces, your options were basically flimsy Walmart laces and that was it.
That never sat right with us. If you're wearing expensive sneakers, you don't want to lace them up with fifty-cent laces that dilute the whole look. A pair of premium kicks deserves laces that hold up to that same standard. So we set out to be the first company to actually focus on shoelaces the way sneaker brands focus on the shoe itself — premium materials, colors people would actually want, textures, the whole thing. Nobody else was treating laces as a category worth taking seriously, and that gap became the company.
That focus is still what drives our full lineup of shoe laces today.
One of the clearest signs of that difference shows up in a part of the lace most people never think about: the aglet.
What is an aglet?
The aglet is the small plastic or metal cap at each end of a shoelace. Its job is to keep the lace from fraying and to give it a stiff point so it can actually thread through eyelets. Most people just call it "the tip of the shoelace," and don't think about it again — until it falls off.
Why the aglet is where cheap laces fail first
When we started this business, the biggest complaint we heard about cheap laces wasn't the color or the material — it was that the tips fell apart within weeks. Glued-on aglets on low-cost laces crack, split, and slide off with normal use, and once that happens, the lace starts fraying and gets harder to thread every time you re-lace your shoes.
That's one of the details we obsessed over early on. A lace can look fine on the shelf, but the aglet is what tells you whether it was actually built to last. It's a small part, but it's usually the first thing to reveal whether a lace is genuine quality or just something that looks the part in a photo. It's also the detail we build every pair of premium shoe laces around.
How to tell if a lace's aglet is actually built to last
- Check the seam. A well-made aglet has a clean, even seam with no visible glue residue or cracking at the edge.
- Give it a gentle twist. A quality aglet stays firmly fused to the lace. If it spins loosely around the fabric, it won't last.
- Look at the material. Reinforced or double-dipped tips generally hold up longer than a single thin plastic coat.
Caring for your laces so they last longer
Beyond the aglet itself, a few habits go a long way toward keeping any pair of laces — ours or otherwise — looking and performing like new:
- Hand wash when possible. A machine wash cycle is hard on both the fabric and the aglets. If you do use a machine, put laces in a mesh bag.
- Air dry, don't tumble dry. Heat is one of the fastest ways to warp or loosen an aglet.
- Re-lace less aggressively. Yanking laces tight from the tip puts repeated stress exactly where they're weakest.
Why we still do this, over a decade later
Small details like this are the whole reason Shoe Lace Supply exists. We didn't want to build just another lace company — we wanted to build the one that actually cared about the parts nobody else was paying attention to. More than a decade later, that's still what separates a lace that lasts from one that doesn't.
Ready to swap out a pair that's letting you down? Browse our full collection of shoe laces, or head straight to our size chart to find the right length for your shoes first.
