Born on the
Côte d'Azur.

The origin

Born from pain.

For years, Franck suffered from a calcaneal spur — a painful bone growth at the heel that makes every step a reminder of its presence. He tried everything, from off-the-shelf insoles to specialist consultations. The relief was always temporary. The pain always came back.

But Franck is a designer and an artist — someone with an intimate understanding of materials, how they behave, how they age, how they fail. And foam, he understood, was always going to fail. It compresses, degrades, and stops working. An artist doesn't accept a material that betrays its purpose.

Carbon fiber — the material of aerospace and motorsport — offered something foam never could: elasticity without degradation. Three years of prototypes later, Franck had built something genuinely new: an orthosis that unloads the foot from pressure, stores the kinetic energy of each step, and releases it in perfect sync with the natural gait — relieving the entire posterior kinetic chain, from foot to spine. He built the final version in his living room, on the Côte d'Azur. The pain lifted. And this time, it stayed away.

The meeting

A new approach to comfort.

It was in July 2025, in Antibes, on the Côte d'Azur — the sun-drenched stretch of southern France, home to the Monaco Grand Prix and the Cannes Film Festival — that Bruno and Franck crossed paths.

When Bruno first saw the insole, his instinct was doubt. It looked hard — rigid even. Nothing about its appearance suggested comfort. But the moment he put it on, something unexpected happened. The firmness he feared wasn't there. In its place was something he hadn't felt before: the elasticity of rebound, a sole that didn't just cushion the foot but accompanied its movement. And then something else: his back felt lighter. The difference was subtle but real — and impossible to ignore.

Franck hadn't just made a better insole. He had replaced the softness of the material with the elasticity of its rebound — and in doing so, invented an entirely new approach to comfort.

The venture

Built for America.

Bruno was intrigued — but also skeptical. So they sought professional opinions. What emerged from those conversations was clear: CarboSteps doesn't claim to solve medical problems. What it does — measurably and consistently — is improve walking comfort and posture by relieving the posterior kinetic chain and accompanying the natural movement of the foot. The foot works less hard. The body stands taller.

They filed for a patent — not just for the insole, but for a broader vision: to make this carbon fiber architecture the centerpiece of an entirely new shoe sole, worn two ways — as a standalone insole or built into a shoe designed around it from the ground up.

The choice to launch in the United States was deliberate. Europe has its traditions — and its reluctance. America is where bold ideas find their audience, where new approaches to old problems get the platform they deserve. CarboSteps LLC was incorporated, and the journey began.

Where we are

From living room to launch.