For Clinics & Providers
Bracehorn is available to orthotics providers, clinics, hospitals and footwear retailers. If you fit braces or sell footwear to people who wear them, this is a problem you already hear about.
The gap between a good fitting and a workable morning
A patient leaves your clinic with a well-fitted brace. What happens next is often outside the fitting appointment entirely: they go home and discover that getting the brace into a shoe is its own daily problem.
An ordinary shoehorn is too narrow to control a brace and will not hold an angle. So patients improvise — long-handled shoehorns, grabber tools, plastic bags over the foot. None of it was designed for the job. The visible result is a heel counter that bends, then cracks, and a shoe that no longer holds the brace in position.
It is a small problem that shows up every single morning, and it is one you can hand someone a solution for at the fitting.
What Bracehorn is
A shoehorn built specifically for brace wearers. Three things separate it from a standard one:
- Width. Broad enough that a bulky brace cannot slip off the side of it.
- A concave channel. Cradles the brace and the heel counter together so the brace travels straight rather than wandering.
- A working angle. Set for a seated user, so the foot comes into it naturally.
It is made from a firm, smooth, heavy-duty plastic, chosen over metal for weight and handling. The inner surface is designed to take scratching so the brace does not — worth mentioning to patients at handover, since it looks like wear but is intentional.
Who it suits
Patients in rigid or semi-rigid lower-leg bracing who dress themselves or are helped daily:
- Ankle-foot orthosis wearers, including drop foot following stroke or nerve injury
- Carbon fibre and exoskeleton-style brace wearers
- Arizona-style leather gauntlet wearers, where the leather grips the shoe lining and makes entry particularly difficult
- Patients in temporary post-surgical bracing
It is used seated. The patient positions the toe, holds the tongue clear, sets the brace against the back of the heel where the Bracehorn sits, and brings their weight down — the brace slides in rather than being forced.
Why providers stock it
Three practical reasons, none of them clinical:
It answers a question you are already being asked. The shoe question comes up at fittings and at follow-ups. Having something to hand over closes it.
It protects the footwear you recommended. If you have advised a patient on extra-depth or brace-compatible shoes, the way they put those shoes on determines how long the advice holds up.
It is inexpensive and needs no fitting. One size, no adjustment, no follow-up appointment. Suggested retail is $24.95.
Who makes it
Bracehorn was invented by Dominic Ahn, who has spent decades fitting shoes in his own Seattle-area stores. It came out of watching the same failure repeat across years of customers in braces — cracked heel counters, collapsed shoes, and a tool that was never designed for the job. It is a footwear person's solution to a footwear problem, built with brace wearers in mind rather than adapted from something else.
Request a sample or pricing
Wholesale pricing is available, with better rates by quantity. We are happy to send a sample so you can try it against the braces you actually fit before deciding.
Tell us who you are, what you fit or sell, and roughly what quantity you have in mind, and we will come back to you with pricing.
Get in touch or email info@bracehorn.com.