25 Laser Clinics Australia

Having clinched the 17th spot in last year’s Smart50 Awards, Laser Clinics Australia founders Alistair Champion and Babak Moini are back at it again in 2017, posting $155 million in revenue last financial year and a three-year revenue growth rate of 122%.

With a franchise network of 86 stores, the business has grown significantly from its humble roots in 2008, becoming a fully fledged franchise network with stores in six Australian states. In the last financial year alone, the company carried out over 2.7 million treatments.

However, the scaling of the business has been one of the biggest challenges for Champion and Moini, with the two realising a franchising model would be one of the only ways to grow the business at a successful rate.

“Although we were confident we had an exciting model, we were conscious of the fact that we couldn’t scale without driven and passionate partners as owner-operators at the ‘coal front’,” the founders say.

“Each of our clinics today are run by a franchisee with extensive business acumen and ‘skin in the game’.”

With the ambitious goal of doubling the size of the business in the next few years, including by opening new clinics locally and overseas, the founders have put a lot of focus on informing, coaching, and supporting their franchisees, ensuring the varying needs of each are being met through interaction with the main business.

This is coupled with a focus on convenience, innovation and scale, but the founders believe business owners should never “let the tail wag the dog” when trying to achieve these types of  large-scale goals.

“In retail, business owners will often build a single store, realise they have a good business model then try to roll it out,” the founders say.

“This can be fraught with problems, from not having the right management structure in place right through to supply chain inefficiencies,” the two said.

“Define what you what to achieve then build a plan to make it happen.”