Funnel research

Prepared for

PAHI

Part one of three. The finding.

This is the evidence the funnel strategy stands on. It is not a pitch. It is what the research said, where each piece came from, and how far each piece can be leaned on. Every quote in these three pages is verbatim from a source that exists in the research files, checked by script rather than by eye. Spelling and punctuation are the customer's own.

01

The audience is not seniors

It is people with a named balance impairment, and the people who love them.

PAHI's own customers name their own condition, unprompted, in reviews they were not paid for. That is a narrower audience than older adults, far easier to reach, and it is who is already buying.

18

Genuine customer reviews in the Judge.me export, all five stars

Measured 2026-09-08

6

Distinct conditions customers name themselves, without being asked

~700

Live competitor ad cards read in the Meta Ad Library

21 searches

0

Competitors in that sweep selling the shape of the outsole

The position is unoccupied

Three of the 18 reviews come from one customer with multiple sclerosis, who has written unprompted three times without ever being asked for a second. She is a case study waiting to happen. Two more reviews were written by people buying for somebody else.

02

Two buyers, and they want opposite things

Buyer one, the wearer

Will not be described as frail

This is the strongest signal in the community research and it is close to universal. It is also not an age story. The refusal shows up under 50 as readily as over 80.

I’m nearly 50 and I have horrible balance. I hate when people comment on it.
Wearer, about 50 · Reddit, r/AskOldPeople · 17 upvotes
Then your balance wavers and someone notices and says you should keep a cane close and use it because you don’t want to fall at 75yo and break a hip!
Wearer, 75 · Reddit, r/AskOldPeople
I still haven't gotten over the stigma of wearing those being less than 40 years old.
Wearer, under 40 · Reddit, r/neuropathy

Those are for old people is the single most frequent objection in the caregiver and patient corpus, appearing about 22 times, and it blocks the purchase rather than only the wearing. A cane announces frailty. A rollator announces it louder. An orthopaedic shoe announces it every day, to everyone who looks down.

Buyer two, the caregiver

Afraid of having caused it

Not afraid of the fall. Afraid of being the reason for it. The most upvoted item in the entire corpus is a person who bought the wrong shoes, and it reads like a confession rather than a review.

This time he fell because I gave him these clunky ass Frankenstein shoes I was assured had good treads, but he can’t walk well in because they’re huge heavy clompers.
Caregiver · Reddit, r/CaregiverSupport · 52 upvotes, the most upvoted item in the corpus
First I was going to go for a lighter and more walkable shoe, but then I overthought it and worried about the treads so went for the enormous stupid clonkers.
The same caregiver · Reddit, r/CaregiverSupport
My 92 year old dad fell face first on concrete, needed stitches and has a huge egg on his head and split the skin on a finger. [...] Cannot bear my stupidity. I harmed him
The same caregiver · Reddit, r/CaregiverSupport

They are not shopping for safety. They are shopping to not be wrong. That distinction decides what the offer has to do, and it is why the guarantee carries more weight here than the discount.

The gift buyer is large and measurable. In the medical and stability corpus, 113 of 7,143 brand reviews are third-party purchases: 40 name a husband, 26 a mother, 20 a dad. In the easy-entry corpus the figure is roughly 583 reviews naming a family member. For that buyer the product is getting the shoe on, not the cushioning.

The conflict, stated plainly

Fear sells to the caregiver and repels the wearer, and the wearer holds the veto. So the funnel cannot run on fear even though fear is what drives the search. The resolution is that the caregiver gets to give something that does not insult the person receiving it, and the wearer gets a shoe that says nothing about them.

03

The rivals' own customers make the case

The clearest evidence for the opening is in competitor review corpora, not in PAHI's. It is people who keep buying and are ashamed of what they are wearing. A person who will reorder a shoe they are embarrassed to be seen in is describing a market with no acceptable option.

Buying it anyway, and hating it

I find the shoe to be so very ugly and clunky looking… an orthopedic little old lady shoe. I wear it for its comfort, and will order more, but I am embarrassed to be seen wearing them in public.
Orthofeet customer, two stars · Judge.me, orthofeet.com
This style did not suit me or my feet... very old lady looking I'm person and the way my flat feet bulge at the sides made my for look even more ugly in these.
Orthofeet customer, two stars · Judge.me, orthofeet.com
They are clunky. Feel like a box on my feet.
Apex customer, one star · Yotpo feed
Too ugly to keep. Refund process slow and time consuming
Apex customer, two stars · Yotpo feed

Getting what they actually wanted

The best thing is these shoes don't look like clunky orthopedic shoes! Love them!
Propet customer, five stars · Yotpo feed
They fit perfectly with my orthotics. They look great - not like old lady shoes. And delightfully comfortable.
Apex customer, five stars · Yotpo feed
Not a heavy clunky shoe. Very light and not afraid to get on the scale at the Doctor's office!! Keeps my feet stable, supported and steady. Great walking shoe.
Propet customer, five stars · Yotpo feed
Even sneakers would work if they were appropriate and did not look like sneakers.
Caregiver · Reddit, r/AgingParents

The appearance objection is louder among the people who never buy. In the medical and stability corpus it appears 130 times on Reddit against 78 times in brand reviews, and the Reddit corpus is 32 percent smaller than the review corpus it is being compared against. The refusers never become customers, so they never review. The rivals cannot see them.

04

What this audience punishes

Three registers show up again and again in the community research as things that get a seller dismissed. They are worth stating because two of them are how the category currently speaks.

Promising prevention

Caregivers police overclaiming themselves, and they have already decided the category lies to them. The last of these three comes from a thread whose title is a caregiver asking for a fall prevention device.

My dad did the same thing, it’s not the shoe it’s the dementia
Caregiver · Reddit, r/dementia · 20 upvotes
My husband could trip on a wave of air, he has shuffled since 2018. No type of shoe prevents tripping.
Caregiver · Reddit, r/dementia
I’m sorry, there is no such thing as fall prevention. If it’s marketed as such, it’s a lie.
Reply to a caregiver asking for a fall prevention device · Reddit, r/AgingParents

They have watched a miracle shoe fail already. The disclaimer PAHI is legally required to carry turns out to describe the only position this audience will believe.

Talking down, and nagging

The second register is being managed. The third is the instruction to use your walker, use your cane, from the people who love them. Copy that instructs rather than offers reads as the family argument they are already losing.

I don't need to be treated like a goddamn child
A patient, quoted by the nurse charting the fall · Reddit, r/nursing · 3,599 upvotes

The register that does work is in the same corpus, from a caregiver describing what finally changed their mother's mind. It reframes the object rather than the person.

“It’s not a walker — it’s a freedom machine. If you use it, you can keep walking around without anyone hovering over you.”
Caregiver, on what finally worked · Reddit, r/AgingParents

One word to be careful with

In walking and running footwear, stability already means pronation control. It is an arch word and that audience owns the definition. PAHI's stability is a different axis, resistance to tipping sideways. Used bare, it will be misread, and a customer who buys expecting arch support and receives base geometry sends the shoe back. So name the axis. Lateral. Side to side. A wider base.

Across 13,608 items in the mainstream walking corpus, PAHI's own vocabulary is absent: outrigger 0, catamaran 0, base of support 0, medial-lateral 0, proprioception 0, fall prevention 0, lateral stability 4. The words customers use for the same mechanism are side to side, wide base, broad base, and as wide as the top of the shoe.

One PAHI customer already names the axis correctly, and he appears to be a physician.

I was skeptical a at first, but these sneakers really give me added lateral balance. Nothing but positive things to say. Need more colors, that’s all!
James D.M., whom PAHI’s public reply addresses as Dr. Domesek · Judge.me, pahiusa.com · five stars
05

The scene nobody has named

The strongest unoccupied frame found anywhere in the research. People with balance problems have to balance on one leg to put their shoes on. They describe the consequence constantly and the cause almost never.

102

Uses of the word balance in the easy-entry and comfort corpus

26

Uses of one leg or standing on one foot in the same corpus

a handful

Items that put the two together

The words exist. The frame does not.

12,109

Reviews, posts and comments read for that corpus

OOFOS, Kizik, Skechers, HOKA, Vionic, Reddit

I am a senior with mobility issues and it's been tough to put on my current shoes and tie the laces without losing my balance. Now I just push my feet into the shoes and VOILA - I'm done!
Skechers Slip-ins customer, five stars · skechers.com
he told me he was wears a size 12 shoe despite being a size 8 because they’re too hard for him to put on. [...] He also mentioned he has to sit in a specific chair or else he is unable to get them on.
Grandchild, asking for help · Reddit, r/disability
Bought these for my 89-year old father, and he loves them! Just being able to slip in them without sitting down and bending over to put on his shoes, it's a total thumbs up!!
Caregiver, four stars · Kizik

PAHI is the only brand that can close this, because it is the only one selling both halves: a shoe you do not have to balance to put on, and a shoe that helps you balance once it is on. Kizik and Skechers own the first half and stumble into the second by accident. Nobody should have to balance on one leg to put on the shoe that helps them balance.

06

A third audience, deliberately parked

On-feet-all-day workers. Nurses, teachers, retail, hospitality. The voice is large and distinct in the mainstream walking corpus: 104 items say on my feet all day, 71 say 12 hour, 99 say concrete. The site already has work-shoes collections built, and one PAHI customer review speaks in exactly that voice.

Whether I’m running errands, chasing after kids, or on my feet all day, they keep me comfortable without any fatigue.
Anonymous, a parent on her feet all day · Judge.me, pahiusa.com · five stars

Real, and not first. Chasing two audiences in ninety days produces two half-arguments. Revisit at day 90.

07

Where two methods agree

HM3 wrote its own strategy on 8 September, without our input, working from the business rather than from the corpus. It names two audiences at scale: adult children shopping for a parent, and people who stand all day. Those are the two segments this research produced from the other direction, out of reviews and community threads.

113

Of 7,143 brand reviews are somebody buying for another person

40 a husband, 26 a mother, 20 a dad

~583

Reviews in the easy-entry corpus that name a family member

The gift buyer, counted

104

Items that say on my feet all day, against 71 saying 12 hour and 99 saying concrete

The worker, counted

2 of 2

Scale audiences named by both, arrived at independently

Different method, same answer

Agreement reached from two directions is worth more than agreement reached from one. HM3 read the business and the category. This research read what customers and caregivers wrote when nobody was selling to them. Neither knew what the other would say, and both arrived at the caregiver and the worker.

The second agreement is about a word

HM3's positioning deliberately separates PAHI from arch support. The mainstream walking corpus shows the same collision from the customer side: in that category stability already means pronation control, and 13,608 items contain no use at all of the vocabulary PAHI uses for its own mechanism. Two routes to the same instruction, which is to name the axis every time.

Where the two do differ, it is on detail rather than direction, and those points are in the working notes for the session rather than here.