By Khalida Sarwari
It happened three years ago, but Joshua and Matthew Tsui-Teng still remember that fateful day at the Vallco Mall when Matthew’s shoelace got caught in an escalator, causing him to fall.
“It was scary,” Joshua, now 10, exclaims upon hearing his mother, Victoria Teng, bring up the subject.
The incident led Joshua and his 6-year-old brother to come up with an ingenious idea to replace the shoelaces in their shoes. With their mother’s help, the three designed a stretchable band that can be inserted in place of laces to keep shoes together, effectively removing the hassle and potential danger that comes with loose laces. It’s especially useful for children, who most of the time are unaware that their laces have come undone, said Teng.
Their invention is called ShoeBend and comes in playful pink, blue and white colors and designs such as hearts and stars. Joshua himself has opted to go with a metallic design, while his brother wears them once in a while.
When asked why he prefers them to shoelaces, Joshua answers, “They’re easier to use and they’re unique.”
While the boys came up with the design, they have an uncle in Hong Kong who buys the materials and puts the products together using plastic, rubber, metal and silicone.
The family has given them to friends, charities and churches, and while they plan to continue doing so, they’d also like to start selling them for about $9 a pop, said Teng. With the proceeds, she said they’d like to continue giving back to their community.
This is “going to inspire them to build a better world,” she said, “to become entrepreneurs for helping more people in society.”
In the future, they’d like to add special features to the ShoeBends, said Teng. There’s potential for GPS and Bluetooth capabilities to prevent kidnappings, for example, she said.
The budding entrepreneurs, who are enrolled in the fifth and first grade at Argonaut Elementary School, also have their fingerprints on their mother’s cyber security company, i-Linke. The boys designed the company’s logo and worked on the dynamic password and key, both of which were patented last summer. They came up with the idea by playing a game they learned from their friends called “Cut the Gate,” said Teng.
The process made them realize how important personal privacy and security are, she said. Teng, who founded i-Linke in 2013, said her kids learned about encryption and algorithms by playing not only that game but other computer programming games at school.
“Both kids like invention and also to help,” she said.
