Video Transcription
Victor Suturin 00:02
$2 billion—this is an annual spend for one condition, and it's for treatments that either have no effect at all or have no long-term impact. Some might call this condition purely aesthetic, but this number indicates that for a lot of people, it's anything but. The condition is cellulite. $2 billion is spent on creams and gadgets every year that don't work. But there's one thing that can: aesthetic surgery. So why won't more people choose this option? Well, that is because you come into the surgery looking like this, you do it, and two months later, you look like this; you are $6,000 light in your pocket. But honestly, is it really that much different? The problem is that they have limited surface area treatment, and it's really located on the skin. These white fibrous bands anchor the skin. If they become short and hard, they pull the skin down and cause the dimples of cellulite. To treat the cellulite, surgeons get under the skin and cut each fibrous band. But if they cut the bands, they risk detaching the skin. Therefore, they can only treat a very small area at a time before they have to stop, which explains the result. But if you could solve the problem of detaching and injuring the skin, you could treat a much bigger area. But to do that, you have to stop cutting and start using Cell Leaf. Cell Leaf is our medical device. It's one-time use, and it treats cellulite not by cutting the bands, but by loosening them gently until the dimples disappear, while the skin stays intact. For the patient, it means they get less damage, fewer side effects, and smoothness they can see. So how does it work? Patients will come in for surgery. They lie on their front, they'll get anesthesia—general or local—and you'll make a small incision, less than two millimeters. Then you grab the Cell Leaf, and you guide it in smoothly through the incision, through the fat, and under the dimple. Once in place, you would use this slider. You would flick it forward, and you would release the leaf. Now you just gently pull the leaf back, parting the bands and making them soft again. Okay? It works a little bit like a snow plow, gently loosening the bands and releasing the dimple. So what's next? Once you treat one spot, you stay in that hole, change direction, and treat a new area, and a new area, and a new area—30 minutes, one incision, whole leg, no dimples. This is the vision for the Cell Leaf. But where did the idea come from? From the very beginning, we developed Cell Leaf with the plastic surgeons. We iterated over and over again. They wanted it to be thin but robust, effective but gentle, precise but affordable. That's a formidable challenge that could easily take 10 years and dozens of millions of dollars. It didn't take us 10. It took us four years. It didn't take 20; we did it for $2 million. This is Aliform today, a VC-backed medical device company headquartered in Dallas, Texas, with their own production in Maastricht, Netherlands. Our product, the Cell Leaf, is produced and is listed with the FDA, and we are going to perform the clinical studies in the first quarter next year with the same surgeons that helped us develop it. Is there a market? What do you see when you look at this map? We see 15,000 plastic surgery clinics in the US—predictable hubs like Texas, California, Florida, New York. Our customers are the plastic surgeons. They charge up to $6,000 for this outpatient, no reimbursement procedure. We sell Cell Leaf for $1,000 single use, and we make it for $100 in the Netherlands. This was Aliform four years ago, and this is us two months ago in the clean room, assembling the product—280 products, enough for the first case studies, for the large clinical trial, and even for pilot sales—all critical value inflection points. Dollars to meet them. We have an open round of $2 million US dollars, half full, Cell Leaf, so no woman has to waste money on products that do not work, and so every woman can feel comfortable in their own skin. Thank you. Applause.
