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Dr. J. David Holcomb has seen two massive drop-offs in client counts at his Sarasota-based facial plastic surgery business since he founded it in 2000: Once after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks and again after the credit crisis and markets meltdown of September 2008.
“Both times,” says Holcomb, “the phones just stopped ringing for months.”
In 2001 and into 2002, Holcomb just hung on and hoped for the best, as he kept on marketing his business locally to snowbirds and full-time residents. Then the Gulf Coast building boom that began in 2003 elevated Holcomb Facial Plastic Surgery to new heights. Patients, many of whom were seeing real estate-fed bank account boosts, were coming in for multiple procedures and spending as much as $15,000 per appointment.
The practice peaked financially in 2006, says Holcomb, who declined to release specific annual revenues or the number of patient procedures he performs per year. Then came the big drop-off of late 2008.
But this time around, Holcomb is fighting the industry downturn in a decidedly more proactive way: His tool is AccuLift, a fiber optic laser procedure that uses facial contouring to accomplish what Holcomb says can be the next best thing to face lifts or filler injections for many patients.
Holcomb co-created the procedure over several years of research and development in conjunction with Princeton, N.J-based medical laser device firm Lutronic. Holcomb now serves on Lutronic's medical advisory board.
The AccuLift procedure takes about 90 minutes and is done with local anesthesia, as opposed to the more time consuming facial plastic surgeries, which normally require general anesthesia. An AccuLift procedure also costs about $5,000, 50% less than a standard face lift.
The procedure works by using a laser, as thin and precise as a few strands of human hair, to melt fat in a patient's neck, chin, cheeks and other facial regions.
“It's not as good as a face lift, but not everyone has the time or money for that,” says Holcomb. “This is an alternative.”
And for Holcomb, AccuLift has become a recession survival method. He estimates he's performed the procedure on a little more than 100 patients since he debuted it last December — clients that wouldn't be clients without the service. “It has been a very good addition for us,” Holcomb says.
Indeed, Holcomb has had so much success with AccuLift that he recently formed the Institute for Integrated Aesthetics, a local training facility where he offers classes to doctors worldwide on the procedure. In just the past few months, doctors from Italy to California have come to Sarasota to learn about AccuLift.
Moreover, the procedure has been gaining some national attention outside Holcomb's institute and practice. For example, Holcomb spoke at a press event for AccuLift in New York City in September, where he later met with several glossy women's fashion magazines to talk about the procedure.
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