Your med spa wants to add a laser and you are not a physician. Who finances it?

Aesthetic lasers are medical devices, and in most states their use has to be supervised by a physician or a mid-level under a physician's direction. A lender financing a $100,000 device wants to know it will be used lawfully, because a spa that loses its medical director loses its ability to run the machine — and the machine is the lender's security. So the question is not really about your ownership. It is about your supervision structure.

Have it in writing before you apply: the medical director agreement, the protocols, the state's rules on who can fire the laser. A non-physician-owned spa with that folder in order is a normal file. One that cannot produce it is the file that gets declined, and the owner concludes the problem was the ownership.

A spa with six to twelve months of deposits, a booked injector, and a medical director is what an equipment lender wants to see. The device secures the loan, terms run three to seven years, and the manufacturer's finance arm often has the best rate because it wants the placement. Get the vendor's quote and the manufacturer's finance offer, then price the same device through an independent equipment lender, and take the better total.

Newer spas — under six months, or with a founder new to aesthetics — are underwritten on the plan, the location, the director and the owner's experience, and are asked for a larger down payment. A spa run by an experienced nurse injector with a strong personal file will be treated better than the calendar suggests.

A new laser does not arrive booked. Training, marketing, the first consults, and the first packages sold take a quarter or two, and the equipment payment starts in month one. Owners who financed the device cleanly and still ran short did so because the ramp was funded out of the same account as payroll.

A business line of credit sized to three months of the new device's payment plus the launch marketing is the right shape for that gap. It is harder to qualify for than the equipment loan and should be applied for at the same time, while the statements are strong, not after the ramp has thinned them.

Read the buyout. A lease with a fair-market-value buyout on a device you intend to keep for five years costs materially more than a loan or a dollar-buyout lease. Read the service terms — some manufacturer financing bundles a maintenance contract at a price that is negotiable separately. And confirm who owns the device if the spa changes medical directors: the answer should be you, not the director.