Necessity as mother of invention
Injured leg leads to new business venture

by Al Sullivan
Reporter staff writer

SOMETHING?S AFOOT ? An invention to deal with a painful foot problem led Paul Mavzanobile, attorney Steven Llorens, and Joy Marcial to start a Jersey City company.

Paul Mavzanobile said he?s happy to have found a new career after working as a Wall Street broker, even if it took his close friend?s broken leg to do it.

That?s what spurred Mavzanobile, a resident of Jersey City, Steven Llorens, an attorney, and Joy Marcial, a dentist, to develop a new product that could change the way doctors treat some foot and back injuries.

Jersey City resident Llorens injured his knee in late 2007 as a result of an accident at Lake Tahoe and hobbled around on crutches for three months.

The problem wasn?t the injured knee so much as his other foot, which bore most of the burden during recovery.
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?I had to keep the knee straight, which meant putting all the pressure on my left foot, and it took a pounding.? ? Steven Llorens
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?I had to keep the knee straight, which meant putting all the pressure on my left foot, and it took a pounding,? Llorens said.

Diagnosed with Plantar Fasciitis, an inflammatory condition of the foot that is caused by excessive wear to the plantar fascia (the thick connective tissue that supports the foot?s arch), Llorens was advised by doctors to use orthotic insoles to relieve pressure on his aching foot.

But nothing he found on the shelves of drug stores worked well enough to relieve the pain.

The invention

So he began to puzzle over pieces of the other products, until he cobbled together something that actually relieved the pain.

?I looked at different materials in the drug store and saw different foams and tapes,? he said. ?Basically, I took two or three different products and from them pieced something together I could wear.?

When he went for a checkup, his doctor, Dr. Spero Demoleas of Old Tappan, N.J., saw the rigged item and asked about it, and then later asked if Llorans could create something for his other patients who suffered from similar conditions.

Figuring they might be on to something, Llorens, his downsized Wall Street buddy Mavzanobile and their dentist friend, Joy Marcial, took their invention to a podiatrist convention earlier this year. They discovered other foot doctors and professionals were as puzzled and perhaps even delighted by the invention.

Encouraged by the positive responses, Llorens and his new partners, Marcial and Mavzanobile, have decided to market the new product. They have recently put together a more professional version under the Arch Angel Brands, with Sole Angel Arch Supports as the keystone product of the new company. It is based in Jersey City and uses Dr. Demoleas as one of the company?s medical consultants.

With a line of other products being developed, the partners are headed off into a new career, which may have been boosted with the positive results of a local sports star to whom they gave the product.

?When we heard that the star quarterback was diagnosed with the same affliction that I had, we knew the pain he was feeling and we just wanted to help alleviate it,? said Llorens.

Although they received no official endorsement from the team or the star, the partners plan to unveil the product before the upcoming podiatrist convention.

For Mavzanobile, the invention came at a good time.

?I worked as a Wall Street trader,? he said. ?This is the chance I needed.?