Emma Burke didn't set out to start a business. She was standing on the sidelines of her son's football training in the wind and the rain when a parent looped an elastic band around a boy's boots so his laces would stop coming undone. Everyone else's kids retied their laces three, four, five times a game. His didn't. That was the moment Laceeze was born.
Summary
This is a founder story about turning a problem nobody was searching for into a brand sold around the world. Emma had trained as a vet nurse on £80 a week, then built a 60-person contract cleaning company she quietly dreaded, before spotting that elastic-band trick on the touchline. She didn't invent it. She saw it work, asked the parents and the kids whether they'd buy and wear a proper version, and took the answer to market. Laceeze launched in 2017 at £6 and is still going today.
She and Matt get into the marketing problem most product founders never see coming, which is customers who don't yet know they need you. Emma explains how she built the UK with no marketing budget through an ambassador programme, why selling to an audience of children means treating safeguarding seriously, and how being honest on social media (the wins and the bits that go tits up) builds the kind of trust that ads can't buy. There's a brave call she made pulling her best seller right before Christmas, the supplier relationship she rates above everything else, and a complaint she turned into a five-star review.
Key sections by timestamp:
- 00:00 Welcome, Liverpool to Bournemouth
- 02:09 The elastic band on the touchline, how Laceeze started
- 03:47 From an £80-a-week vet nurse to a 60-person cleaning company
- 05:41 Throw away the business plan (she's never written one)
- 10:38 Going full-time, and trying to crack the USA
- 14:42 When customers don't know they need you, the ambassador programme
- 17:39 Safeguarding kids, and a TikTok violation
- 19:14 Grassroots community and giving back
- 21:38 Founder-led and honest on social media
- 27:35 Winning customers for life when things go wrong
- 34:45 Free market research, competitor sites and an inspiration folder
- 37:16 The one she wishes she'd known, pulling the best seller at Christmas
- 40:17 The most important relationship in the business
- 41:18 Rapid fire, Shopify, Klaviyo and getting into Claude
- 44:54 The dream, the US and a big brand collaboration
The Accidental Founder Who's Never Written a Business Plan (02:09)
Emma is clear that she's no inventor ("save that for Mr Dyson"). What she has is a little black book of crazy ideas and a habit of acting on the good ones. Before Laceeze there was a vet-nursing career she loved and a contract cleaning company she grew to 60 staff on the back of a Dorset property boom, knowing, by her own account, almost nothing about running a business when she started.
"I'm not your textbook kind of business builder. I've never written a business plan in my life." — Emma Burke
Matt's seen the same thing from the other side. He once had a would-be founder spread every form she thought she needed across his boardroom table, business plan and all. He swept the lot into the bin so they could actually start. The point both of them make is the same. Begin with a real problem and the simplest possible solution, and let the rest snowball.
"It was never done like, oh, we're going to create this product and it's going to go global. It was literally, there's a problem, here's a solution, and let's just take that to market." — Emma BurkeWhen Your Customers Don't Know They Need You (14:42)
The hard part of selling Laceeze isn't the product. It's that nobody wakes up looking for it. A parent watches their kid retie a lace five times a match and never thinks twice about it. Building what Matt calls solution awareness is the whole game, and in the UK Emma did it with no marketing budget at all, through an ambassador programme that started with a few mums on the sidelines and a £9.99 pair of bands gifted in exchange for a tag.
"You've hit the nail on the head, because we've got a solution to a problem, but parents don't go looking for the solution." — Emma Burke
That programme is now a points-based platform with monthly challenges, and she's rebuilding it by hand in the United States, where the brand-recognition gap is the real reason PPC on Amazon wasn't growing. Because the audience is children, the work comes with a duty of care. Laceeze only sends to parent-run or clearly flagged accounts, and Emma is candid about a TikTok post of the product on a pitch being flagged for "exploiting children", with the appeal auto-rejected by a bot in about fifteen seconds.
Honesty as a Marketing Tool (27:35)
Emma's case for founder-led social media is simple. Tell the truth, including when a container's stuck or a shipment's delayed, because that's the reality of building a brand and people connect with it. Matt backs it up with a story of his own. One of his sites had its best month ever after a totally honest email about a stock shortage, telling customers they'd get one of six now and the rest later at the company's expense. Sales went mental.
The same instinct shows up when things go wrong. Emma describes a customer who vented on Facebook without ever contacting the brand directly. She moved them into the DMs, apologised, sent product, and two weeks later they were asking where to leave a review.
"Take the more negative, unhappy ones and see what you can do to resolve that. Because let's be honest, they're the ones that shout the loudest." — Emma Burke
As Matt puts it, the angry ones are at least telling you what the problem is. Going out of your way to fix it is the secret marketing tool no one talks about.
The Brave Call That Saved the Reputation (37:16)
Asked what she wishes she'd known sooner, Emma goes right back to the first Christmas. The bands started snapping, a cutting and manufacturing issue, and rather than risk kids finding duds in their stocking fillers, Laceeze pulled everything at peak selling season. It was gut-wrenching, every instinct told her to keep selling and just replace the faulty ones, but the unseen risk was the customers who'd never complain and would simply decide the product was rubbish.
"It's not just a rubber band. There's a lot more to it." — Emma Burke
They switched manufacturers afterwards and have stayed put since. Emma rates that relationship above every other in the business, a supplier with a UK office and a China factory, on her time zone, close enough to pick up the phone. The brave call cost a Christmas. It bought the reputation that carried the brand worldwide.
Today's Guest
Emma Burke is the Founder and Managing Director of Laceeze, the elastic-band brand that keeps kids' football laces tied and gives back to grassroots sport with every UK sale. She spotted the idea on the touchline of her son's training, launched in 2017, and is now building the brand in the United States.
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Episode link: https://www.ecommerce-podcast.com/the-elastic-band-that-became-a-global-brand-with-emma-burke
