MERIT LASER SERVICES
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The best lasers From Austin’s #1 Laser Services and & Sales, Merit Laser Services. Resources
Spend less than you were initially planning to spend. Brand new lasers, IPLs, or RFs (LIPLRF) can cost anywhere from $50,000 to more than $200,000. The presumption is that you need to spend this amount of money to be successful. This isn’t true.
First, when you enter a new phase of your business, you need to be able to pivot the business in six to twelve months. No matter how much planning you do to develop this new business segment, ultimately your customers have the final say on what they want. If you have leveraged $50,000 to $200,000 in a new device that has lost at least half of its value the moment you buy it, how can you sell or trade the now “used” device? The answer is you can’t – not without taking a massive financial loss.
Second, in addition to your customer's needs, you also need to consider the competition’s response to your new venture. You will attract customers who have never had an aesthetic procedure, but you will also pull customers away from their current providers. In response to your pricing, location, staffing, and other competitive branding factors, your competition will respond with their own lower pricing, free treatments, and other customer retention strategies. If, at this point, you have invested heavily in one technology, how can you pivot without a significant loss or new cost?
Lastly, as with any initiative, you will learn valuable information about your customers, market, staffing, costing, margins, and more over the first six to twelve months. If you start with an investment of around $30,000, you will put yourself in a position to pivot into the correct technology without a significant loss or additional cost. This flexibility is crucial once you have a better view of your target market and its response to your business.
Never buy a system with an expensive consumable such as a tip or pad. These systems are great for the manufacturers but are rarely, if ever, good for the practitioner. Think about it: if it were good for the practitioner, why would a manufacturer create an expensive consumable? You cannot make enough of the treatment to cover the consumable cost. Initially, when the device is new and no one else in the marketplace has it, you might be able to make a profit. Once the fad wears off, you can no longer cover the cost of the consumable, let alone all of your other overhead related to the LIPLRF device.
In addition, most devices that have consumables will have an alternative device from a competitive manufacturer that does not have a consumable. For example, Fraxel CO2 has consumable. Do you need to buy a Fraxel CO2 with a consumable when there are ten other options without one?
Any device with a consumable has little to no resale value. Manufacturers charge recertification fees of up to $35,000, and consumables are generally proprietary and locked. If you sell the system to a new owner, he or she would be required to pay these ridiculous fees just to buy and use the consumables. The result is little to no resale value. (We will tear down the manufacturer’s recertification fees in a subsequent article. Often, the manufacturer cloaks the need for this fee in patient safety reasoning. If it were truly about patient safety, they would charge a nominal fee to test the system. The recertification fees are truly about creating predatory monopolies for new device manufacturers. Until then, consider the logic of buying a new Lexus only to be told when you sell it that your new buyer needs to pay a $35,000 recertification fee to Lexus.)
Never buy equipment from a “medical equipment broker.” Say that out loud: medical equipment broker. Would you go to a doctor who works alone out of his house? It seems so obvious, yet this is the most common mistake buyers make. Just as you shouldn’t see a doctor who works out of his house without the proper infrastructure, you shouldn’t buy medical equipment from brokers or other people who work out of their homes, buying and selling equipment that ships from a seller’s location directly to yours.
Ask yourself these questions:
- How can a broker have the correct de-installation process necessary to properly prepare the LIPLRF for shipment?
- Does the broker have the right type of crating and packaging?
- How do they ensure that all of the accessories are obtained from the seller?
- Most importantly, how is the LIPLRF tested and repaired before its shipment to you? Even if the system could be tested and repaired by the broker, does the agent the broker hired have the proper training, the correct testing equipment, the necessary parts, the alignment tooling, the service manuals, etc.?
- Furthermore, does the broker carry product liability insurance to protect you from their “spray and pray” business model? (“Spray with Windex and pray that it works by the time it arrives at your office.”)
- Keep in mind that most pre-owned systems are out of warranty, out of calibration, have had no preventative maintenance for months (or maybe years), have not been inspected for safety or electrical issues, are not drained, and do not function to specification.
- How and why could a system be shipped from one location to another without first undergoing a refurbishment and repair process?
