Fun, Hope on Display

What do you get when you pair sports equipment and aids to daily living with Bloomingdale’s-style retailing? Answer: Rehability!, a focus-on-fun retail store attached to the Good Shepherd Health & Technology Center in Allentown, Pa.

Rehability, “Your Optimal Living Store,” has been likened to a Toys ‘R’ Us for boomers. But it’s more than that. Designed to cater to those dealing with physical limitations, it’s a place of possibilities.

“We use the traditional retailing tools to create a positive vision for the future,” says Charles Marinello, vice president of lifestyle products and services for Good Shepherd.

“There’s a huge TV screen overhead where we show the Paralympics, people having fun. It’s all positive, it’s all fun. You have therapists who are helping you, you have people who have been through [the frustrations of disability] and who are working and are just fine. The spirit is, you’re OK.”

While it carries a lot of ADLs, Rehability does not feature DME. And it doesn’t take Medicare or Medicaid — just cash and credit cards (it also has its own gift cards and gift registry). “We don’t do DME at all — zip, nada,” says Marinello.

When Rehability opened, it created consternation among local DME providers, he says, but that evaporated. “We are a complementary business to them,” Marinello says. “If someone wants a wheelchair, we refer them to a DME company. And if someone wants the products we carry, the DME companies refer them to us. It’s a symbiotic relationship.”

Rehability is located on the ground floor of Good Shepherd’s health and technology center, which opened in October and includes a pediatric section, recreation pool, fitness and outpatient centers, not to mention a Starbuck’s. The store completed the rehabilitation center’s mission of providing a continuum of care for people with physical and cognitive disabilities, Marinello says.

Marinello, who sharpened his retailing skills at such places as Saks, Macy’s and Bloomingdale’s — and who also knew what it was like to be felled by a physical problem that landed him in a wheelchair for nearly a year — was recruited to create the 3,300-square-foot store.

He set it up in standard retail style with the coolest items he and his staff could find segmented for home, car, bathroom, etc. Clinicians double as salespeople, and all of them, Marinello says, have experienced disability so “they can show you how to really use these products.”

The 3,500 products include such enticing gadgets as speaking watches, flashing doorbells, swiveling car seats, adaptive snow skis, even backpacks (and treats) for your service dog. Want a pinball machine? It’s there. And you can play it with one hand, one foot, an elbow or your head.

But most of what you find is hope.

Sean McHugh, an associate at the store, knows all about that. McHugh is an upper extremity amputee. Even though he worked as a therapy assistant prior to coming to Rehability, he was pretty frustrated.

“I wanted to get back on the river in my kayak, get back on my mountain bike,” he says. Like those who come to the store, he’s discovered possibilities for his life. He’s not only back to mountain biking and kayaking, he’s teaching the latter.

“The thrill of working at the store,” he says, “is when people come in and say, ‘Here’s what I want to do.’ I’ll go to the shelf and say, ‘Have you seen this?’ and … after a demonstration, they’re in tears because they have found something they thought they were going to have to live without doing the rest of their life. OK, we’re in tears all the time — happy tears.”

Find out more about Rehability on its Web site at www.rehabilitystores.com.