UNION COUNTY — Lindsey Carmichael is on a mission to prove orthopedic shoes aren’t just for grandmas.

She wants to show women these shoes should be as fashionable as they are supportive. This is why Carmichael, a La Grande native living in Boise, started her own shoe brand in December 2023.

“I had the idea for a long time because it’s historically very difficult to fund a functional, comfortable shoe that is also aesthetic,” Carmichael said.

So, she created Soleni Shoes to provide just that.

An idea is born

“I would say this whole journey was initiated from a knee injury I experienced in high school,” she said.

Carmichael was an all-around athlete in school. She played soccer, basketball and ran track for La Grande High School. Then during her senior year she blew out her knee while playing basketball.

The experience was devastating for Carmichael and her teammates. The tigers were ranked No. 1 in the state that season. She said it was a “life changing injury.”

Carmichael underwent surgery in Portland to repair her torn ACL, MCL and her medial and lateral meniscus. After graduating from LHS in 2003, she went on to play four years of college basketball and one year of college soccer at the Oregon Institute of Technology, but her knee injury was a catalyst for future issues, including arthritis.

“I got my knee fixed, everything was fine and then I just started having some pretty serious problems in my mid-20s,” Carmichael said.

But not everything that came out of the experience was bad. Carmichael said her initial interactions with her medical team left an impression on her and ultimately gave her the drive to go to school to become a physician assistant, also commonly referred to as a physician assistant

She has worked as a PA for the last 15 years and specifically within orthopedics for nearly 10.

“As I’ve grown in my career as a PA, I’ve developed my own orthopedic issues and with all of my interactions with my patients — particularly female patients — I’ve come to realize that I’m not an anomaly. Tons of women have lots of lower extremity joint paint,” she said.

The shoes

Carmichael draws on her experience as a mother, physician assistant and former athlete to create Soleni Shoes.

“I think the combination of my personal experience with orthopedics and surgery and also my interactions with all of my patients have collectively put me where I’m at now,” she said.

She works with a developer and a designer to create the shoes, which are then produced in Southern China. She said it takes around 18 months of turnaround time to make a new style and design.

Carmichael said the thing that sets her footwear apart is the contoured removable footbed, which provides orthopedic comfort without the orthopedic look. The trademarked Soleni Solace offers built-in comfort with a wider toe box, a deep heel cup and arch support.

“The footbed itself is something that if a patient came to me and had some of the simple bread and butter orthopedic complaints like plantar fasciitis or bunion pain or  metatarsalgia, that type of contoured footbed would be what I would recommend in my clinic for patients,” Carmichael said.

Having enough room inside the shoe to fit prescription orthotics also mattered to her. 

Carmichael explained when she was playing varsity soccer at 15 she experienced some bad lower back pain. Her physical therapist at Mountain Valley Therapy determined she needed prescription orthotics, which helped alleviate the pain.

However, she said that a “struggle with prescription orthotics is trying to shove those into different types of shoes.”

Next steps

Carmichael mainly sells her shoes online. She said that it’s easier to reach people with her story through the internet.

“It’s such a relatable story for lots of people. I’m just a small town kid that had big dreams and pursued them,” she said.

Since her background is in medicine, Carmichael said there was a steep learning curve when it came to launching Soleni Shoes. There was the nitty-gritty of footwear development and design, but with international manufacturing she had to learn about getting her products on shopping containers, licensings, fees and tariffs.

Carmichael also had to learn everything about marketing, from search engine optimization to creating and editing videos to promote her business, and accounting.

“I celebrate every time I balance my QuickBooks accounts,” she said with a laugh.

Eventually, Carmichael said she would like to retire from her job as a PA and focus full time on Soleni Shoes. In the future, she would like to expand into wholesale and believes her footwear line would best fit in boutiques.

Her shoes are for sale at a few physical stores, such as R&C Adventure Footwear.

“It also means the world for them to support me,” Carmichael said.

Soleni Shoes are available online at https://solenishoes.com/.