Ya know, every once in a while someone invents something that you wish they hadn't. While some people like it, others hate it. While I may be a minority here, I'd like to state for the record that I fucking hate velcro cable ties. I like to help out on load ins, when the local guys or lighting crew will allow me. It kind of keeps me from getting any fatter and I'm usually around the gig anyway o answer design questions I do the easy stuff like running dmx cables between all the moving lights. It's relaxing. Except for the fact that every cable from lighting companies now has a piece of velcro on it.
About 10 years ago some company decided that it would be cool to use velcro to tie up thier cables. It would save time apparently. But does it really? I don't think so. I believe I spend more time pulling apart cables that have their velcro strips attached to each other by accident.
Today I'm looking at a bunch of multicables that have these 2 inch wide straps on them. These are actually cool. I can see using these as opposed to string. But now I'm looking at 5' long XLR data cables. And they have a 12" piece of velcro on them. I can wrap this sucker around the coiled cable 5 times. It will only take the next user 15 seconds and 2 free hands to undo this velcro cable tie.
In the old days American electricians preferred a piece of string on each cable. You would tie it in a knot at one end, end then tape the sucker to the cable permanently. Sure you got an occasional knot. But string is comparitively cheap, and there's always some around.
Over in Europe, the lampys prefer to use roles of electrical tape to tie thier cables up. In the morning you just rip last nights/gigs tape off and leave hundreds of bits on the floor. Someone will sweep it up by showtime. Its always on the bottom of my foot, but I prefer this to unsticking velcro straps from my shoe laces.
Vince Foster used to refer to all the tape on the floor as "Land fill". Because he reckons it ends up there and between him and all his English lighting bretheren they habe probably used up enough of the stuff to fill an entire one.
Stage hands like to use all these brightly colored velcro straps to hold the cable on the truss. It makes everything tidy. Until you find yourself 30' up in the air on a snorkel lift trying to trace back one bad wire through 100' of velcro straps.
This is all just my opinion. I'm known to be wrong at times. And I know of some great uses for velcro. Just not as a cable tie.
