• by Les Luchter , Staff Writer, November 14, 2024

In 2007, Ben Utecht won a Super Bowl game as tight end for the Indianapolis Colts.

But our story starts the following season, when Utecht came down with a painful fungal foot infection.

That condition stemmed from showering in a shared NFL locker room facility, and Utecht set out to seek a solution to the problem.

Finding none beyond flip-flop sandals, he ended up patenting his own foot protection device and then developed it with the Bakken Medical Device Center, housed at his alma mater, the University of Minnesota.

Last spring, Utecht formed a company called Sole Care RX, which has just soft-launched the product -- called the Shower Sock -- while readying a full-scale launch for early 2025.

The Shower Sock can be described as disposable footwear that allows water to flow through for normal washing while preventing infections.

As explained in a company video, “medical studies show that shower floors have 60 times more bacteria and fungus than a toilet seat.”

Although developed to be worn in showers, whether communal ones as in health clubs and athletic facilities, or those just shared by one’s family, the Shower Sock can also be used in such locales as hotels, spas and dormitories, Utecht tells Pharma & Health Insider.

Those categories will all be targeted in the Shower Sock’s marketing, he says, along with podiatrists and consumers.

“It’s designed to be a protective product anywhere a bare foot touches tile,” he states.

In a spa, for example, “Think about having a distribution box on the wall as you enter the shower facility. You can pull the socks off, put them on, and you’re able to wash your feet through the sock.”

While the water moves through the material, Utecht explains, “applications within the material prevent bacteria and fungus from bonding to the sock, so it acts as a repellent shield.”

“Through its patented chemical applications, which prevent bacteria and fungus from bonding to the sock,” the video explains, the Shower Sock aims "to repel contracting and transferring infections such as athlete’s foot, ringworm, plantar warts, candida, staph, COVID foot lesions, and more.”

The Shower Sock “is also embedded with a fragrance so it smells amazing,” Utecht adds. “You get to have almost a luxury experience while protecting your feet.”

The Shower Sock is being sold online to consumers right now, with prices ranging from $12 for a pack of four pairs, to $144 for a 48-pack, with subscriptions bringing those costs down to $9.60 and $131. Each pair can be used three to four times, Sole Care says.

B2B marketing to the various vertical industry categories will come with the formal launch in the new year.

“Up to 25% of the world’s population at any given time is suffering from bacterial or fungal foot infections,” Utecht notes.

(Sources for that figure include the Handbook of Nonprescription Drugs: An Interactive Approach to Self-Care, 20th Edition, published by the American Pharmacists Association in 2020).

The prevalence of the foot infection problem came home to Utecht recently when one of his four daughters developed plantar warts on the bottom of her toes. “The next thing, you know, all four of them end up having it because they’re sharing the same shower facility,” he says.

Paul Rothweiler, technology development program manager at the Bakken Center, tells Pharma & Health Insider how foot infections were common occurrences when he was playing sports in school. “We were all in the same shower,” he states. “All it took was one kid, and that exposed all of us.”

While Bakken has no commercial stake in Sole Care, the center plans to be working with Utecht again as the ex-footballer pursues what he would only call future opportunities in the “foot wellness space.”

Other commercial products that the Bakken Center has helped launch during its 20+ years in existence include the Aria CV for pulmonary hypertension, Minne Ties for dental surgery and Soundly, an anti-snoring app.