Real Estate Mogul Billy Procida and “The Grateful Dead” Keyboardist Jeff Chimenti Sing A Song

March 17, 2011 - PRLog -- (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey- March 17, 2011) Ten years ago, when Billy Procida, a real estate mogul from New Jersey jumped on stage with the Grateful Dead’s Bob Weir and his band RatDog for a spontaneous jam session, little did he know that this would be the beginning of long term friendships, a series of wonderful stories, good will and great business.

After their initial meeting, it didn’t take long before Procida entered the inner circle; he was invited to Italy to celebrate his 40th birthday and sat in on another gig in San Diego. Mixing business with pleasure, the band’s manager along with keyboard player Jeff Chimenti, invested in Procida’s private equity fund and over the years Procida has continually advised members of the band on a number of business matters, including the current release of  Grateful Deadopoly, which debuted in stores last year. Procida and the band members have collaborated on charitable events for Bergen County based
"Table to Table,”which feeds the hungry, as well raising over half a million dollars for the New York Historical Society, which held a showing of Grateful Dead memorabilia.

Now, this story gets better and better. Back in 2007, Chimenti’s mother, besides other medical issues at hand, had been diagnosed with Obstructive Sleep Apnea (closing of the airways while sleeping) and as a result, while sleeping at night, had to wear a mask attached to a kind of ventilation device for treatment known commonly as CPAP (Continuous Positive Airway Pressure) therapy . Upon her first mask application while still hospitalized, she received a laceration across the bridge of her nose and that concerned her doctor's quite a bit. Over the next few days and seeing no improvement to the injury and the much needed therapy being intolerable, Chimenti set out to find a solution. They say, necessity is the mother of invention, or as Chimenti states, "My mother was the necessity for invention."  Driven by his desire to make his mother comfortable, Chimenti tried and exhausted all over-the-counter padding possibilities he could think of, and was as even allowed into the hospital's wound care stock to possibly find the right padding that would allow his mother to continue with her therapy, but to no avail.

Chimenti then made a call to the band’s Instrument Tech, AJ Santella who is a master craftsman in his own right, to discuss Chmenti’s wishes to find a gel or silicone material that had the desired specs needed to address and solve the padding issue needed for the mask creation.Santella, while being in the band's studio during the call, found a gel material used for dampening vibration on drum heads that fit the desired discussed criteria. Chimenti immediately bought the gel at a local music store, tried it, and found it to be successful. Being that the material came in strips, and needed to be configured a specific way on his mother's nose, it was then realized that it would be best if the strips could be made into one piece for ease of use and hence, the light bulb lit up. Chimenti and Santella immediately set out on designing and crafting what is essentially the same pad on the market today. Chimenti's mother unfortunately passed away in early 2008 but it was with her inspiration, and ultimately in her honor, that the progress would continue, realizing that facial/nasal-bridge sores were an ongoing issue associated with CPAP therapy.

Chimenti then called Procida to ask for his help, being Procida has a vast and varied list of personal contacts acquired through the many years of being in business. Through Procida'scontacts, there were immediate responses and the results were the availability to a pharmaceutical/medical grade gel to replace the originally tried gel and ultimately, the first endorsing Sleep Doctor. Chimenti and Santella promptly formed and named their companyCHI-SAN LLC along with Procida as the third partner and the three had moved fast and furious to try and get the pad to market as many folks plagued with the same mask issues, could find relief and most importantly, compliance with their CPAP therapy. It was then that the fourth partner Ron Richard (former CEO of the oxygen/respiratory based company SeQual Technologies as well as being a veteran of over 30 years in the Sleep industry and a side musician playing percussion/harmonica and woodwinds) was introduced. With the foursome in place (which was perfect as they are all crazy about golf), the creation which became known as the "Sleep Comfort Care Pad.

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While ResMed’s design philosophy is to create comfortable masks that make it easy to achieve a seal without causing skin irritation, they recognize that some patients will experience sealing and skin sensitivity issues. The Sleep Comfort Care Pad may help these patients to reduce skin breakdown and facial sores, improve overall comfort, and reduce mask leaks.

This acquisition will enable ResMed to offer a simple acclimatization solution to all CPAP therapy patients, while driving brand awareness and greater revenue opportunity from patients not currently using ResMed products.

Activities are currently underway to rebrand the Sleep Comfort Care Pad to ResMed.  ResMedhas recently taken over supply and distribution of the Sleep Comfort Care Pad and renaming it to The Gecko. http://www.resmed.com/us/misc_lp/gecko-headgear-promo.htm... www.resmed.com



About Procida Funding, LLC
A leader in the industry, Procida Funding provides loans, makes investments and has completed transactions aggregating over $2 billion of debt and equity. Procida Funding provides an array of advisory and investment banking services to Real Estate and middle market corporate clientele, which include development and construction oversight to capital raises and debt restructuring and marketing.
Procida Funding’s impressive list of clientele include GMAC, Harbinger Capital, Ritchie Capital, National Penn Bank,
Bear Sterns, and Bayonne Medical Center. William Procida Incorporated is the parent company founded by 30 year Real Estate, Construction and investment-banking veteran, Billy Procida.

About Billy Procida
Procida, a former NYC Real Estate Developer of the Year, has received numerous accolades from the industry including the pillar of the industry award from National Builders Association. Further recognition includes “Man of the Year” honors from the Mortgage Bankers Association, Bronx Chamber of Congress, The American Jewish Congress and the Mid Bronx Desperado's as well as a Citation of Merritt from the Bronx Boro President. As an expert in the field, Procida is a regular on TV outlets such as CNBC and FOX; has had more than 50 articles published and has lectured at prestigious universities such as Columbia, Yale, New York University, and Kutztown University, as well as dozens of trade associations. He has also served on the board of Table to Table since 1998.  The Founder and CEO of Palisade Financial, which completed over $1 billion of real estate investments as fund manager achieving returns of over 17% for his investors during his tenure from 2002 to 2007.

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