Bread, an elastic shoelace company based in Fayetteville, has been around for a couple of years, but the last couple of months brought a number of exciting milestones. It reached more than 390,000 pairs of laces sold, was featured in the New York Times and in December founder Nick Prentiss was named to the Forbes 30 Under 30 List.

To celebrate, the company is beginning a new pledge to donate a food item to a person in need for every pair of shoelaces sold with the help of local nonprofit Be Good NWA.

“Bread, at a product level, is an elastic shoelace that stretches and allows you to slide on any shoe,” Prentiss said. “It’s most popular with hightops.”

And while still fairly new to business, the leaders of the company say philanthropy is an important part of their growing operation.

“We like to give back to the local (community),” said Cole Himmer, a senior at UA and chief operating officer for Bread.

So far the company has donated laces to Fayetteville High School, where the gift of laces that make shoes easier and faster to slip on were particularly appreciated by the athletic teams and those in special needs services, said Logan Hahn, a local who works in order fulfillment.

They’ve also sponsored races and donated laces to regional retirement communities, where Bread laces simplify the process for people who have difficulty bending down to get shoes on.

“That’s our main focus, giving back and finding the right crowd, people who really appreciate our product,” Himmer said. As a result, some people have formed an emotional attachment to the laces, and Himmer believes that’s reflected in their many good reviews online, where they often hold a 4.7 or 4.8 average.

“Our goal is to, every time we sell a pair of Bread laces, we give something back — a loaf of bread to a food bank (or other items) especially in the food industry, something where we’re trying to build a foundation of naturally just giving back for what we’re doing,” he said.

HOW IT STARTED

It all began with a Christmas gift, when Nick Prentiss got a pair of Nike Blazers from his aunt. As a Division 1 athlete in track and field, Prentiss was accustomed to wearing low top shoes, so wearing the fresh pair of mid tops presented him with a new problem: they were taking longer to lace up.

As a junior business management major at UA, Prentiss had his daily schedule laid out to the minute and noticed that lacing the new shoes was throwing everything off. He wanted a lace that would save him time, but he’d also been on the lookout for an opportunity to enter the business world.

“From a young age, I knew that starting a company was the ultimate goal,” Prentiss said. While still a student, he had applied and been rejected a few places. “It got to the point where I thought ‘Maybe this is a sign,’ and decided ‘I’m going to go ahead and start something.’”

So what if, Prentiss wondered, rather than having a time consuming unlacing and re-tightening process the shoelace gave a little each time you put the shoe on? Then “you’d be able to slide your foot in and out, tied or not tied? You wouldn’t have to do anything, loosening or whatever,” he recalled his Eureka moment. “This is it, elastic shoelaces!”

That day, Nick started a Google document, the first business plan for Bread. He planned to release it on the first day of school, but the process took a little longer than he expected. Instead, Bread laces opened its doors Sept. 22, 2022. Prentiss used his savings that he’d built from a security job at the Walton Arts Center and from donating plasma at Biolife. Just enough to get the company off the ground and place that first bulk order.

In sourcing the laces, Bread ships products from China but worked with the development of a lace that is more comfortable, wider and yet still natural looking — not spiraled, clip on or otherwise out of the ordinary in appearance.

“The lace itself is quite essentially indistinguishable from a traditional shoelace,” Prentiss said.

At first he stored all the shoelace boxes in a corner of his apartment, the boxes stacked up, and when it came to marketing, they made TikTok videos in his apartment and at his fraternity house.

HOW IT’S GOING

When it came to landing on a name, Prentiss wanted one short enough to easily fit on ads and the product packaging. But he also didn’t want something that would limit him to only selling laces.

While other elastic shoe companies tend to have the words stretch, expand or link in the title, which helps with search engine optimization, Prentiss chose “Bread” knowing he could go on to expand his line to include other items.

A few months into their venture, TikTok Shop came out, and they placed two Bread laces — one 54” white lace and one 54” black lace on the market. Pretty soon they had a whole bunch of five star reviews.

These days the company has a warehouse and office not far from Baum Stadium, from which they ship orders and handle all operations. Inside they’re busy innovating, Prentiss said.

What they’re working on next are business shoelaces, laces for kids and toddlers, as well as those for the military, which require a particular color set and combination of stretch and strength. In the future, once those new laces are perfected, they hope to expand to creating shoes and possibly clothing.

Meanwhile, they’re taking a similarly open and creative approach to their giving practices.

“Logistically, it can be challenging … if we sold 15,000 pairs yesterday, we’d need 15,000 loaves of bread,” Prentiss said. Depending on the partnerships they form, the company may begin to donate a portion of proceeds to paying off school debt for students who need meals or make alliances with bakeries. “Of course that’s a discussion we had (recently), so we’re getting the ball rolling on that.”