About
Bracehorn was not designed at a drawing board. It came out of a shoe store, from watching the same problem happen to customer after customer for years.
We fit shoes for a living
My name is Dominic Ahn. I have spent decades fitting shoes in my own stores in the Seattle area — which means I have spent decades watching people put shoes on, and watching where it goes wrong.
A lot of my customers wear braces. Ankle-foot orthoses, carbon braces, Arizona-style leather braces. They come in because a brace changes what footwear works, and finding shoes that fit over one is genuinely difficult. That part I could help with. But I kept noticing something else.
The back of the shoe kept failing
People who had been wearing braces for a while would come in with shoes that were destroyed in a specific way. The heel counter — the stiffened piece at the back of the shoe — would be cracked or folded down flat. And once a heel counter has broken down like that, it will not go back to shape.
It was not the shoes. It was what was happening every morning. Pressing a brace against a soft heel counter bends it. Do that daily and eventually it cracks. I was selling people good footwear and watching them wear out the back of it within months.
The tool they were using was a regular shoehorn, and it was never designed for this. A brace is far bulkier than a bare foot. A thin shoehorn slides right off it and will not hold an angle while you are trying to work. So people were guessing at the approach, making several attempts, and pressing down on a shoe that was collapsing underneath them.
What they needed was a guide system. Something wide enough to actually control a brace, that would hold the path open so the brace could travel straight down into the shoe.
Making it
The idea was simple. Getting it right took longer.
The first decisions were the easy ones. It had to be much wider than a normal shoehorn, so a bulky brace has a surface it cannot slip off. It had to be concave, so the brace and the heel counter are cradled together and stay in line. And it had to sit at an angle that works for someone in a chair, because that is how this is actually done.
Length and angle were what took the real trial and error. Too long, and the horn catches the back of the calf and works against you. Too steep an angle, and the foot will not slide in properly. Too shallow, and it makes contact somewhere it should not. There was a narrow window on both and we went back and forth until the motion was simply smooth.
I chose plastic over metal deliberately. Metal is heavy, and this is a tool people handle every day, often with limited grip strength. A firm, smooth, heavy-duty plastic is lighter, easier to position, and slides better.
One more decision worth explaining: the inside of the Bracehorn is meant to scratch. Something has to give when a brace slides across a surface under load, and I would rather it be the tool than the brace. So the horn takes the wear. Marks on the inside mean it is doing what it was built to do.
Who it is for
Bracehorn is for people who wear a rigid or semi-rigid lower-leg brace every day — people living with drop foot, stroke survivors, people with degenerative muscle conditions, and anyone in a brace temporarily after surgery.
It is for the families and carers who help them, and for the orthotists, physicians, therapists and retailers who fit braces and footwear and get asked about this problem constantly.
It solves one specific thing. It does that one thing properly.
Where things stand
Bracehorn is made, tested and ready to ship. Right now it is available directly to clinics, orthotics providers, hospitals and footwear retailers, with wholesale pricing available by quantity.
If you fit braces or sell footwear to people who wear them, get in touch — I am happy to send a sample.