First of all what a great resource. Tons of information although you might want to upgrade the site search functionality as I was only able to perform the most primitive of queries. Hence my questions here
I live outside the USA and I went for local laser hair removal here and I discovered there is only one serious company offering that service where I live. There are many laser companies offering sub-standard product. Even the reputable company is using Ruby lasers which I understand are no longer used in hair removal. But they are the best in town, so hey, that is what I used.
Anyhow, their tariffs were priced per pulse, which is fine for small jobs. But they refused to negotiate pricing for larger jobs (1 hour or more). I found this unusual and I can only assume it’s because they are choc-a-bloc with work.
So it got me thinking I might give them a run for their money. Before launching into a new business venture you need to ask the pro’s. So if anyone would be kind enough to answer I’d much appreciate it. Here are my questions:
I am based in southern Europe. Skin types range from white to medium brown. Which type/brand of laser will do a good job on this skin range? What kind of cost are we looking at? Opinions on the cheap options from Asia?
I have seen on the forum that many practitioners recommend following laser treatment up with electrolysis. Opinions on this? What kind of machine is good for fast/effective treatments?
For those who run a clinic, would you recommend buying a couple all singing, all dancing lasers or a few cheaper specialized lasers which can be used on more people/skin types simultaneously?
If I want to run a pro clinic do I need to stock other equipment to offer a full service?
Should I offer other treatments apart from hair removal? I see with these lasers you can do all sorts of things. What training level is required for these other services?
Remember I am living in an emerging economy. It’s not like the USA with all its regulations. What kind of staff do I need? I imagine proper relevant qualifications do not exist here, so if I look for someone who studied abroad what would they be qualified in?
In general, LASER is the sexy thing to do, but it is not the magic bullet. Unless you can do electrolysis to finish, and to do those things (like upper lips and eyebrows) that LASER is not well suited to do, you will make money, but you won’t be a full service facility.
SSLHR and ROMEO are always discussing the machines, so if you go through their posts, you will find out much about the machines themselves.
Ebay seems to get a nice amount of used LASERs up for sale by people who either want to liquidate their loans, or who have closed the business and moved on.
Thanks James - I see from your posts you specialize in electrolysis.
I see everyone saying you must find a good one who can work fast and effectively. What determines their ability to work in this way? Is it good training, years of experience, good eyesight or an excellent machine? Or are all the above required?
Can a better machine influence the speed of the job, or just the quality of the resulting hair clearance?
All of the above are required. I will add a steady hand to that mix. Electrolysis is technically hard to do correctly, but it works very well.
A better machine, meaning a good quality computerized epilator, moves things along very fast as far as an actual treatment goes to get the hair off that is present today. It will still take 9-12 months months at a mininum and 18-24 months at a maximum (for severe cases) to reach permanency. This time frame is determined by hair growth cycles. If the hair is not above the surface of the skin, then the electrologist can’t see the hair to treat it. So, we play the waiting game and twiddle our thumbs, waiting for those hair growth cycles to come around. Same principle for laser hair REDUCTION. A good epilator allows the practitioner to remove hair quickly to get first,full clearance and then keep the area maintained, until every offending hair shows it’s face in the time period of 9-12 months.
Another point: If an electrologist is using bifocal glasses, in additon to a circular flourescent light source, she isn’t going to please a client who has blond accelerated hair on her upper lip. Surgical magnification will solve that problem easily. Last night, I worked on a new client that has been seeing an electrologist for seven months. Unfortunately, she had a lot of blond hair still present that was too long for the upper and under lip areas. I mean, the hairs were actually hanging over the lip like walrus tusks. She sensed that things were not progressing. Ahhhh… this would be true. The electrologist can’t see the hair with that awlful, archaic vision setup.
Consumers need to complain and practitioners need to listen carefully and then take action to upgrade. There is no excuse for any electrologist to defend or offer lame excuses for this kind of electrolysis care. That’s my opinion and I stand by it based on practical everyday observation and experience.
I would like to make the point that this quote is the same for laser hair removal as it is for electrolysis. Unfortunately, what I read (and maybe this is my bias) is that when confronted with electrolysis that isn’t working that we state that it is due to a poor quality electrologist but that when laser isn’t working we’ve moved to quickly stating that the laser doesn’t work. I would argue that in many of those cases (yes there are situations where laser won’t work) it is not because of the failure of laser to be effective but because it was being performed by a poor quality laser practitioner.
Your argument is valid, but with one big difference:
People can and should expect %100 hair REMOVAL, with electrolysis, no matter what the color of skin and hair or structure of hair, given a skilled practitioner, whereas, people should expect a certain amount of REDUCTION, with laser, for only dark hair with thicker structures , given a skilled practitioner and the best laser. It seems that hopeful consumers have the impression that light-based devices can take care of all their unwanted hair needs. Their expectations are always too high and then they complain it didn’t work for them, unfairly so. Heck, some consumers are going from laser to laser for years and years hoping this will finally be THE ONE miracle to solve their problem, even though they are told outright that this won’t work for them.
There are no restrictions for what electrolysis can do and no excuses for not being able to satisfy consumers. The devil is always in the details for a good outcome, whether it be for hair removal or reduction, and there are a lot of details that need to be recognized in order to bring about sweet success. Trouble is, how do you get practitioners to cooperate so they desire to be top-notch in whatever modality they choose to use? This is a huge problem for consumers from what I have heard and observed.
Your questions are mostly answered in the FAQs in the sticky post. We provide the ways to get results. It’s up to you whether you want to provide your customers with the best results possible. I hope that’s the case, in which case you won’t want to buy cheap and not optimal machines. GentleLASE alexandrite is best on the market for light skin you describe.
Laser works best on coarse hair. You may want to consider hiring an electrologist to work alongside you to offer services for fine hair.
Laser manufacturers do laser training. There are also laser training schools. I believe there are some in London too.
>>A better machine, meaning a good quality computerized epilator, moves things along very fast as far as an actual treatment goes to get the hair off that is present today
How does a computerized machine work faster than a plain vanilla machine?
On another point, as far as lasers go I see everyone recommends Alexandrite and YAG, and you need both to treat all skin types. I have seen lasers like this from 5000$ up to 100,000$. I’m a bit baffled about the price range. Is it very risky to buy an older laser?
Energy levels can be pinpointed to the smallest increments and repeated exactly for every treatment if neccessary or tweaked a little up or down to deliver the correct amount intensity for the the correct amount of time. Auto Sensor mode allows an electrolgist to do work without pressing her/his foot on a footswitch thousands of times a day. Very fatiguing and can be the reason why some electrologist will not do marathon appointments. Sensation is better tolerated by these modern epilators and clients can lay on the table for hours instead of minutes. You can get a lot of hair removed this way!
These epilators are pretty powerful for deep man-size hair. Computerized epilators can offer microflash and picoflash thermolysis. Old knob-jobs cannot. With the right probe size, a skilled electrologist can remove between 500-800 per hairs on a man’s back per hour. MicroFlash and PicoFlash are deadly to hair and the advantage of treating a lot of hair per session with decent sensation gives the advantage to computerized epilators.
Owning the sweetest computerized epilator on earth matters none if the electrologist can not see well to insert a probe properly inside the hair follicle.
I could offer more, but I hope you get the idea that older epilators are not the best you can offer for electrolysis care, but clients may eventually get hair removal anyway.
Alexanderlite and YAG are the lasers you need to be able to treat nearly all skin types. Lasers that are $5000 will barely be able to give nay results, if any however you would need to give menames to be able to comment further.
The actual make up of the machine is incredibly important. For example, a laser that has a 10mm spot size and can only go down to 5ms will give barely any results. Where as a machine with a 18mm spot size, which is set at a pulse of 3ms will give far, far better results. It’s like comparing a Cortina with a Lotus 2-Eleven, which do you think would be more expensive? Not all lasers are the same and some are priced the same yet one is better than another. If your really looking for the best lasers you want to look at the GentleLASE (Alexanderlite) or the GentleYAG (nd:YAG), GentleMAX (both Alexanderlite + YAG), Cynosure Elite (both nd:YAG + Alexanderlite) or other Cynosure’s such as the Cynosure Apogee 9300, 6200 or even the 5500 (these are Alexanderlite’s).
What you really need to be able to do is understand what makes a laser powerful yet safe before you can start going in to deciding which laser to buy. Don’t always lsiten to what salesman and women say, they’ll tell you it’s the newest on the market at a fraction of the price. Yes it may be the newest, yes it may be a fraction of the price, but most likely if it costs $5000 it will also give a fraction of the results - however that is buying from new. I have seem some used Cynosure 6200’s on the market from between $10 000 and $20 000.
Professional laser machines cost $50k and up new. If you want to provide the best possible treatments and for all skin types, invest in GentleLASE and GentleYAG, or new GentleMAX which has both alex and Yag settings in one machine.
For electrolysis, I would look for someone with an Apilus machine and good experience and training.
I assume from the price it’s an inferior machine, so it’s probably a good one to use as an example. I see this particular machine only goes down to a pulse duration of 5ms (Ford cortina?) and there is no data there on spot sizes. What determines those? The hand piece?
When they talk about maximum power delivery and milliseconds, do they mean it can deliver up to 32 Joules over 5 milliseconds or alternatively spread up to 32 joules over 40 ms? I assume delivering the power in a short a pulse as possible is the goal to heat the hair up as quickly as possible?
And by the way just how many joules should a good machine be able to deliver?
Sorry for the neanderthull questions, but I have to start somewhere
Joules vary depending on the machine type and spot size sizes. 15mm spot size and above would be best to get. Low pulse is important. GentleLASE has a 3ms pulse and an 18mm spot size, which makes it a great machine.
I see from the general discussion that GentleLase is the Rolls Royce of Laser. But from a business perspective does it make sense to wrap 100 grand up into a single machine if you could buy 3 machines with different parameters which could be treating 3 (suitable) skin types at once? After all not everyone can withstand short wavelengths with short delivery times.
is providing the best treatments most important, or is providing average or less than optimal treatments is ok as long as it’s cheaper in terms of running a business
can you afford a machine that has both alex and a Yag
are you willing to not treat people who are too dark for an alex if you only pick one machine
would you rather offer less than optimal treatments to most skin types or best treatments for just lighter skin types
is providing the best treatments most important, or is providing average or less than optimal treatments is ok as long as it’s cheaper in terms of running a business
I want to provide the best service and be the best in town. But many people here have tan skin.
can you afford a machine that has both alex and a Yag
Yes, but that machine can only work on one person at a time. Surely it’s better to have 2 machines (one Alexandrite and 1 Yag) if I don’t need to pay double to get 2 machines? That way both machines can be productive simultaneously. I doubt customers will pay more to be worked on by a dual function machine when they only use one of the functions
are you willing to not treat people who are too dark for an alex if you only pick one machine
If I picked one it would be Yag because of the ethnic mix here. But I think I want to have a clinic serving a few people at a time.
would you rather offer less than optimal treatments to most skin types or best treatments for just lighter skin types
Light skin is not so prevalent here, so I don’t thionk alexandrite would be best. Perhaps one machine but the rest should cater to other skin types.
I think you need to do an assessment of how many clients you will have per day. You may be overestimating it a bit. Most clinics I know of in LA have 1 machine and they do just fine. It may be a good idea to start with one machine and only buy more if you feel like you can’t handle the demand.
Dark and tanned skin are different. For best results, one needs to avoid tanning during treatments. So it’s in your interests to tell clients that they should avoid tanning if they want to be treated. Think about it this way - the only way you’ll be successful for a long time is if most of your customers are satisfied. If you’re going to be treating them at machines that may not be optimal and not get them good results, they won’t recommend you to anyone and/or will even talk bad about the clinic enough to scare away others.
You need to think hard and long before making a decision.
Let me just make this point. Laser hair removal is the absolute hardest cosmetic procedure there is. Period. It is harder than liposuction, harder than breast augmentation, harder than any other laser service. Why?
The target is tough. It is deep in the dermis and laser light has to pass through all the other structures to get down into the hair follicle with enough energy to be effective.
If I remove half the fat from someone or if I reduce their wrinkles by 50% they are happy. In some cases ecstatic. On the other hand, hair is different. I put it to people this way. If I take a really thick forest and cut down every other tree, what do I have? Yes, that’s right. A forest. They usually don’t perceive any improvement until we get to 80-90% reduction. People’s expectations are much greater for laser hair removal than they are for anything else.
Yes, point taken. But I’ve been treated with older machines and had a great result. I am 99.9% hair free and I need to go once every 5 months or so to get the odd stragglers zapped. I cannot even tell you what machine I was treated with, but it was not a 100,000$ Gentlelase I can promise you that.
What I really want to hear from the professionals is if these latest super-laser-machines with 3ms pulses give that much better a result than a used older quality brand name machine putting out 5ms pulses and smaller spot sizes (see the advert I pasted a URL to above). Spot size just makes for faster treatments if I understand right?
If you were treating someone with dark skin, would you use a pulse 5ms? That seems to be the difference between the cheaper and expensive machines as far as I can make out.
