Same clinical hardware. Factory direct. No catch.

Forty years in aesthetic technology

Built by people who've sold the expensive version. We know where the price comes from.

Founder Jim Kraushaar spent four decades in aesthetic technology — selling for the brand-name manufacturers, running independent distribution, building relationships with the same OEM factories the big brands use. He watched the same transaction play out hundreds of times: a solid piece of clinical hardware leaving a factory in Asia, passing through a North American distributor, getting a new badge, hitting a trade-show floor, and arriving at a med spa at 2–3× the original price.

He started Alderm Direct to cut that out. Not to undercut on quality — to eliminate the distribution layers that were keeping independent practices off clinical-grade equipment. Twenty years ago the buyer was exclusively a plastic surgeon or a dermatologist. Today that's expanded — ER physicians, internal-medicine practices adding aesthetics, med spas at every scale. The equipment is the same; the buyer profile is wider, and the old distribution model doesn't fit any of them.

The model is straightforward. Source the hardware direct from the manufacturer. Ship it to the practice. Price it to reflect what it actually costs, not what the distribution chain needs to recover. The Alderm Direct team handles every account directly. There is no sales floor adding margin.

• Same OEM, different badge. Tri-wavelength diode lasers come from a small set of OEM factories. Some brand-name systems source comparable hardware from those same factories, apply their own casework and branding, and price accordingly. Hardware class is the same; the casework, software branding, and channel are different.
• Spec comparison holds. 755 / 808 / 1064 nm, Fitzpatrick I–VI, contact cooling, clinical pulse parameters comparable to the major brand-name tri-wavelength platforms. Full spec sheet on request.
• Service is direct, not enterprise SLA. Question about the unit → you call us. The team that sold the unit picks up the phone. Different model than a 24/7 support desk — fits most independent practices.
• Regulatory clearance. FDA cleared for hair removal on 755 nm, 808 nm, and 1064 nm. Documentation on request prior to purchase — we don't ship units without the paperwork in order.
• Honest fit. If you run $1M+ annual LHR with zero downtime tolerance and a procurement team that signs SLAs as a precondition, the brand-name model fits better. For everyone else, the direct model fits.

The structural argument.

• Contact cooling at the sapphire tip. Mechanically integrated, fires on every shot. No cryogen tank, no spray-nozzle clog, no temperature drift between shot 1 and shot 100. Removes a consumable cost line and a failure mode in one decision.
• Wavelength selectivity matches skin type. 755 nm for I–III. 808 nm across I–V. 1064 nm for IV–VI. Less epidermal heat absorption on skin tones the wavelength wasn't optimized for — the comfort delta tracks the safety delta.
• 10 Hz continuous-pass workflow. Operator sweeps the handpiece across the body — mowing a lawn, up and down. Single-shot competitor units force a vacuum-grab-fire-release cycle that stretches the same area into a longer, more interrupted session. Back at ~10 min, both legs at 15–20 min.

Where comfort shows up in your numbers.

• Package completion rate. Closes the gap between "sold a 3-session package" and "billed for all 3."
• Cross-area uptake. A comfortable underarm patient books a leg package. A white-knuckle first session ends the relationship.
• Referrals. "It wasn't that bad" is a referral conversation. The opposite isn't.
• Review tone. 5-star "didn't hurt as much as I thought" reviews compound organic acquisition over 18–24 months in a way paid advertising can't.

Engineering close-up: comfort section on the product page.