How SkinSpirit Became a Leading Med Spa Clinic

SkinSpirit opened its first skin care clinic in 2003, long before the med spa boom.

“We are the largest provider of Botox and filler in the United States,” said cofounder Lynn Heublein, a tech entrepreneur and Stanford business graduate. She launched the endeavor with her physician at the time, Dean Vistnes, a board-certified plastic surgeon and fellow Stanford alum.

“I had gotten familiar with some of these aesthetic treatments personally and had such a great experience with them myself that I could really see the potential of how you could really impact a client’s life,” Heublein went on.

She and Vistnes teamed up noticing how much research and development was being invested in the category and opened doors in Palo Alto, Calif. They now have 45 U.S. locations, with 650 employees. In 2023, SkinSpirit treated about 115,000 clients and performed more than 200,000 medical treatments. Of those, 115,000 included Botox.

“Botox and facials remain the entry points into the category,” she said.

Heublein attributes their growth to their company culture, holding a high bar for professionalism and service, with Vistnes behind employee training, as well as their slow approach to expansion.

“We only had one clinic for five years,” said Heublein.

By 2017 they had eight and a year later they took a minority investment from a private equity firm “to make sure our balance sheet had the capital that we needed to grow,” she added.

“I think that because we did it slowly, we were able to create the systems and maintain the culture,” she said. “That is really our secret sauce. And that’s one of the reasons why I think we’re really fortunate to still be a founder-led company and only have minority equity investors. The investors, when we brought them on, we made sure they understood that the growth could only go as fast as we could manage the culture…The best business is to have high levels of retention. So, we focus on high levels of customer retention and high levels of staff retention and very high standards for our staff.”

They also stay on top of trends and technology, she said. “We’re very networked into the category. Lights and lasers have evolved. Energy modalities have evolved, from ultrasound to radio frequency.”

Their latest focus is on regenerative medicine-based treatments and use of exosomes, a hot topic in beauty.

“Exosomes aren’t going anywhere,” said Vistnes.

Exosomes carry essential information from one cell to another, he explained. “In a nutshell, they’re like these little Ziploc baggies full of messages contained within them. And all the different cells in your body make these exosomes. And inside the Ziploc baggies or these vesicles are messages for other cells. And so, for example, in the skin, there are cells that are relying on messages or instructions to do something, whether it’s to make more collagen or make more elastin or reduce pigmentation, reduce inflammation. And as we get older, the messages and the signals diminish with time.”

Exosomes can be harvested from platelets through donor blood or from fibroblasts grown in labs and then delivered to the skin, he said, “to get your cells to behave in a more youthful fashion.”

At SkinSpirit, an exosome treatment can be done as an add-on injection for $50 or applied as a topical, after microneedling, using Plated’s Intense Serum, a $258 formula delivering a powerful concentration of exosomes to minimize wrinkles, redness, and brown spots.

“There’s a huge demand by the consumers out there, patients, to do non-surgical things that can slow the aging process or reverse it and correct it and not have surgery,” said Vistnes.

Moving forward, “Our vision is to be the trusted national brand for the highest quality skin care,” said Heublein. “We’re very comfortable with a slow and steady approach, because we just think that there’s a lot of risk if you push growth too fast. And because we started 20 years ago, we have a big head start on a lot of our competition. And I think a lot of our competition is growing without having as strong fundamentals as we do. So, we think that that approach is going to get us to where we want to go.”

Next, SkinSpirit will open in Florida, Georgia, Illinois and Minnesota. “By the end of 2025, we will have a national footprint,” she added.