My favorite pair of SAS shoes came with laces that seem to come untied constantly.  Since I suffer from fibromyalgia and frequent muscle cramps, bending down to tie my shoes is not a pleasant experience on the best of days.  I purchased these laces in the hope that they'd be much easier to work with than standard laces and would remain "tied".  They haven't disappointed.

To install them, you remove your existing laces.  Then, you feed these elastic ones through the eyelets in your shoe as you would your original laces.  Leave about 3 inches of lace hanging from the top eyelets and cut off the rest.  Feed the locking mechanism through both laces.  Clip the tab over the loose ends of the two laces to connect them together and you're done.

To "tie" your shoes, pull on the laces until they're comfortably snug.  Then press the button on top of the locking mechanism and pull it down toward your foot until it's tight enough for you and let go. Your shoes are now tied.  This takes less time to actually do than it probably took you to read this.

To "untie" the shoes, press the release button on the locking mechanism and lift it away from your foot to loosen the laces.  Again, this takes about a second.

I've been very pleased and impressed with how quickly and easily these work for me.  They stay "tied" as long as you want them to, and even make the shoes a bit more comfortable than they were before.

Although I've had no problems with them, I do have a little concern that the locking mechanism may wear out the laces eventually, or that the end tab (which only holds the laces in with little plastic pins and friction) might someday come loose.  On the other hand, by the time that happens I'll probably be ready for a new pair of shoes.

I can imagine that if I was an athlete, a jogger, or runner, I'd find this type of laces fantastic.  I'd never have to worry about them coming untied and I wouldn't have to waste a lot of time tying and untying them.  If you have an athletic friend this would be a good and inexpensive gift.