Love Built the Products. Belief Built the Community.
Meet the six founding brands of AECorner Community and the moment each one decided to stop waiting.
Love built the products. Belief built the community.
That is the shortest version of how AECorner Community came to exist. The longer version starts with six founders, a mastermind, and a shared refusal to accept that the people who needed better solutions would simply never get them.
Janice Shokrian, founder of Tausi Brands, watched her father sitting in a nursing home chair, a pillow half-cocked under his neck, deeply uncomfortable and unable to rest. She patented a pillowcase to fix that.
Kathleen Quinn, founder of Mobility Towel, watched her mother Kay lose the small private dignity of drying herself after a bath due to Rheumatoid Arthritis. She invented a weighted towel with handles so Kay could do it herself.
Diane Vitillo, physical therapist and founder of The Original AFO Assist, had a patient look her in the eye and ask if there was anything she could do to help them put on their own ankle foot orthosis. There was nothing on the market. So she built it.
Kerry Mellin, founder of EaZyHold, refused to give up the sports, music, and hobbies that made her feel alive after her grip was compromised. She invented a universal adaptive silicone cuff so nobody else would have to give them up either.
Linda Merry, OT, and Celine Skertich, PT, co-founders of Functional Hand by Thera-Solutions, kept watching parents beg for custom handles for every single tool their child needed to use. They built one adaptable device that works with all of them.
Cindy and Christina Hardin-Weiss brought over 50 years of combined clinical experience as a physical therapist and speech therapist to something deceptively simple: testing adaptive products honestly and telling people exactly what they found. A decade later, 104,000 families are still learning and growing alongside them.
These six were already in a mastermind together, each solving problems in their own lane, when AECorner Community came to them with a simple proposition: let us amplify what you have already built. They didn't hesitate.
That is how AECC was born. AECorner Community is the consumer and clinical professional facing home for everyone navigating adaptive equipment for everyday living. And AEPIC, the Adaptive Equipment Product Innovator Community, is the home for the brands and inventors building those solutions. Because AEPIC is epic. Every founder in it proves that every single day. #AEPICisEpic
The community that started with six founding brands has grown. It has shown up at Abilities Expo and other trade shows. It has partnered with three retail channels spanning clinical distribution, senior living, and the active disability community. And the origin story of how it all came together? That is a story worth its own telling.
When you build from love, you build something that lasts. That is what you will find here.
AECorner Community exists for moments exactly like this one. Dignity, independence, and comfort aren't just words here. You found your home.
