Brand Backstory: How Milan Laser Built the Same Clinic 400 Times in 60 Days Each
- Michele M. Barnes
- Jul 18
- 4 min read
Updated: Jul 22
Milan Laser does one thing. It does that one thing in more than 400 locations.
Milan Laser's wild ride:
Two high school friends bought a small medspa in Papillion, Nebraska, in 2012
The business they bought sold Botox, fillers, lipo laser, and makeup
Today: more than 400 clinics across 38 states and 2,000 employees
More than 90,000 treatments every month
Here's how they did it:
It started with a walk-in
Shikhar Saxena and Abe Schumacher met at tennis tryouts at Creighton Prep in Omaha. Neither one made the team. They became friends anyway. Both went on to become board-certified physicians.
In 2012, Saxena was working an urgent care shift in Papillion, Nebraska. A doctor walked in and asked if he wanted to buy the business across the street. It was called Milan Laser Aesthetics.
Saxena had student loans. He also had no idea what laser hair removal was. He called Schumacher and asked him to come take a look. They bought the place in June 2012.
That business offered more than ten treatments. Botox. Fillers. Lipo laser. It even sold makeup. Saxena laughs about that part now.
"Why were we trying to sell makeup?" — Shikhar Saxena, co-founder, Milan Laser Hair Removal
Four employees, two of them founders
The company had four people on the payroll. Two of them were Saxena and Schumacher. They did every job, treatments included. Schumacher coded the first website himself. Together they wrote the clinical protocols.
Then they made the decision that built the company.
They kept laser hair removal and let the rest go.
Saxena's reasoning was simple. Do one thing and do it well. Offer ten services and you become a jack of all trades and a master of none.
They paired that focus with a pricing change. The industry standard was a package of three to six sessions. Clients used up their sessions and paid touch-up fees to finish the job. Milan created the Unlimited Package. One price. Unlimited treatments. A lifetime guarantee.
One service. One promise. Everything after that was replication.
The floor plan that scaled
The numbers moved fast. 190 clinics in 25 states by 2022. More than 250 clinics in 29 states by early 2023, when Sixth Street and Wildcat Capital invested alongside Leonard Green. Clinic number 400 opened in August 2025.
Here is what makes that pace possible.
Milan generates nearly all of its leads online. That frees the real estate strategy completely. The clinics have no need for a prime corner or heavy foot traffic. Milan takes space in ordinary suburban shopping centers and clusters clinics inside each market.
The buildout is where the discipline shows.
Public Texas construction records document nine Milan clinics between 2020 and 2025. The average footprint is about 1,590 square feet. The average estimated cost is about $159,000. That works out to roughly $100 per square foot. The median schedule from start to completion is 62 days.
Every one of the nine is a tenant improvement inside an existing shopping center. Most are second-generation space. The scopes read almost identically. Demo. Partition walls. An accessible restroom. Interior finishes. Modifications to electrical, mechanical, and plumbing. The work stays inside the four walls.
Milan hired national prototype architects for the program, including Core States and LJP Architects, rather than sourcing design market by market.
One more detail worth noting. Andria Simons was Milan's very first employee. Years later, her name appears as the tenant contact on clinic permit filings in Texas. The people who built the first clinic stayed to build the four hundredth.
Their most recent Texas clinic, in Laredo, came in at 1,385 square feet and 44 days. The prototype is still getting tighter.
Where they are now
The founders have retired from day-to-day leadership. Clint Weiler moved from CFO to CEO. The executive bench now includes leaders from Michael Kors, Ann Taylor, Mattress Firm, and Vail Resorts.
Weiler describes the company's toughest early competitor as awareness itself. The more people understood what laser hair removal saved them in time and money, the faster Milan grew.
He still likes the odds. In his view the category has enormous room left to run.
"Our model's power is its simplicity." — Clint Weiler, CEO, Milan Laser Hair Removal
What Milan's story teaches
Pick one service and get better at it than anyone else. Focus compounds.
Build demand online and your real estate gets cheaper. Marketing strategy is real estate strategy.
A repeatable prototype is a growth engine. Same footprint, same scope, same schedule, four hundred times over.
Cluster your markets. Density lowers the cost of everything that follows.
Keep the people who built the first one. They are the reason the fortieth goes smoothly.
Same room, 400 times
In 2012, two doctors owned a small clinic in Papillion that sold makeup on the side. They kept one service and let the rest go.
Then they built the same room, at the same size, on the same schedule, in shopping centers across 38 states.
Ambition got the headlines. The floor plan did the work.
Michele
KRCrossing Consulting
