Three corpses of red wine bottles washed ashore. Forgotten, on a counter, between the espresso machine and the pearly white shelves where all kinds of skin serums strut. The remains of a toast: there are so many at the moment at the Clinique des Champs-Elysées. In Lille, we raised our glasses. In Nice too. In Bordeaux, Rennes, Lyon, La Baule, Tours, Dijon, in Caen, in Marseille again, in Montpellier, in Reims, in Rennes, in Strasbourg, in Nice, in Dubai. There was even New York.
We toast – we must celebrate well – we refine the decoration, minimalist, tangy, a little Vogue, very Emily in Paris, pastel stools, rattan seats, pink ferns, a few photos of models. Then we open. The group, specializing in aesthetic medicine, has opened one center per month since June 2022. For the curtain raisers, the general director, Tracy Cohen, travels in person.
The young woman, 37 years old, slender, talkative, took over the company in 2010. She was supposed to pursue a career in finance, after a course at Dauphine and an internship at Rothschild where she met a certain Emmanuel Macron. But the establishment, which was then just a simple cosmetic surgery practice founded and managed by his father, in the 8th arrondissement of Paris, was close to bankruptcy. Family duty calls.
“An ogre’s appetite”
The businesswoman then came to the aid of her father, and placed what was then called the Clinique du Rond-Point into receivership. She changed the name, renovated the historic center and computerized it. With her nose in her data, she realizes that the era is more for Botox and hyaluronic acid injections than for surgical procedures. In 2022, it attracts the confidence of an investment fund, Raise, a 20% shareholder, and for several months has been No. 1 in the sector. Its main competitor, Lazeo, has more sites, but mainly does hair removal.
At Imcas, the sector’s annual show, which was held from February 1 to 3 in Paris, it is “Tracy” that we applaud the most. The entrepreneur is aiming for 40 centers in 2024. And tomorrow the whole of Europe. Will she keep up? The person concerned is certain, the demand is strong, the supply insufficient or disparate, especially in medium-sized towns. “We will still have to succeed in filling all these establishments to make this enormous appetite profitable,” notes an independent surgeon, present at the show, a little skeptical.
To prosper, the company buys technical platforms, beds, machines, and rents them to doctors, in addition to taking a commission from them. What will happen if syringe touch-ups become has been, like the surgery before it? Market growth fell in 2023, from 8 to 3%, but it remains very strong, and should stabilize at 5% on average until 2027, industry players in the sector announced this Friday at Imcas.
All-in-one centers
Anyway, Tracy Cohen isn’t just banking on injections. Its establishments are intended to be “all-in-one”. You can consult a dietician and do a “peeling” there, a treatment for dead skin. Freezing fats (cryolipolysis) too, or swallowing a gastric balloon, which inflates in the stomach. Get a hair transplant, why not? The act is becoming more and more common. “If you go to Turkey, you will not be followed,” squeaks the person concerned when we talk to her about it.
The fact remains that the economic model of the Clinique des Champs-Elysées involves increasing the number of clients and procedures. At the risk of seeing the “mouths of influencers”, inflated like balloons, as if they were about to explode, multiply? None of the patients who pass through the black and gold storefront of the firm come out deformed, promises Tracy Cohen. “Our doctors refuse risky or extravagant requests,” she assures. Medical, nothing but medical.
Yet it is these same mouths, plumped, plumped, re-plumped that have made the brand. Before its cascade openings, the elite of reality TV paraded for years in its historic establishment. Manon Marsault, from Moundir and the apprentice adventurers (W9), Jessica Thivenin, Marseille (W9), Nabila herself. Many influencers gave their little note, for “Tracy”. A gold mine for her business, Tracy Cohen knows it better than anyone: one of her first decisions in the company was to set up a “social media” service.
The Ogre and the influencers
The person concerned assures her: no advertising contract has been signed with the starlets – it is illegal. She even cut ties, she says, annoyed by the excesses in the community in recent years. Why then did they share promotional codes for these centers, if not for advertising? “I never gave my consent,” pleads Tracy Cohen. The boss did “offer” a few injections to the most exclusive. A way of “making word of mouth work”, she says, while many foreign actors take advantage of not being in France to shamelessly cut corners. The fact remains that “to offer” is to make a “gesture”. It’s commercial. So prohibited.
Thanks to this “digital word of mouth”, the Clinique des Champs-Elysées has managed to get people talking about it despite the ban on pushing for medical consumption and has opened up a much larger market than that of mature women and well-off. Even if it means trivializing, willy-nilly, aesthetic medicine: today 47% of the group’s patients are under 35 years old. What does it matter if Botox should be reserved for “moderate to severe” wrinkles – that’s what it says on the instructions. “The genius of Tracy Cohen is that she broke the taboo. She made aesthetic medicine come out,” praises a former business partner.
Today, we talk about his injections like his nails. Having “broken the taboo”, Tracy Cohen accepts it, claims it. She believes she is leading a medical revolution. The end of something unthought: that of suffering linked to appearance. And is surprised at the disdain that weighs on the sector. Aesthetic medicine is still not a medical discipline in its own right. It appeared on the job, through injections. Until a decree was issued last year, anyone could obtain hyaluronic acid, which helps pad the skin. And nothing obliges doctors to train. “The authorities have stuck their heads in the sand, that’s why there are so many accidents and excesses today,” she regrets.
Complete the transformation of aesthetic medicine
In November 2023, the company published a white paper to warn of the lack of regulation in the sector. Real commitment, or brand image? It must be said that the bruises, pus, deformations, paralysis, amateur injectors and other failures that we see everywhere in the media in recent years are not good for business. Aesthetic medicine is still scary, perhaps a little too much, when you want to open in France.
In this document, the group asks in particular to “register aesthetic health as a medical discipline in its own right”, and that the establishments which practice it have certification. Enough to ensure constructive collaboration with the order of doctors which, according to the Clinic, would seek to slow down its development. In the eyes of many doctors, aesthetics remains a sub-medicine that should not be recognized.
At the order, as at the Ministry of Health, we do not look very favorably on all these general practitioners or emergency doctors who retrain as syringe professionals, sometimes without having even practiced their specialty for a single second, while the France faces numerous medical deserts. With its 100 partner doctors – mainly general practitioners, whose number should double by the end of the year if the group’s objectives are achieved – the Clinique des Champs-Elysées does more than participate in bloodletting. It enlarges the wound.
A Macronist, to speak to Macronie
The order and the Clinic frequently visit avenue de Ségur. Everyone hopes to make the government hear their vision of the legal framework to adopt. To influence the negotiations, Tracy Cohen secured the services of Clara Sabban, a former member of Christophe Castaner’s cabinet when the latter was government spokesperson. Who better to convince Macronie to create a specialty and thus complete the standardization of aesthetic medicine, in the face of an order that does not want to hear about it? “There are already 44 specialties. You have to agree that that’s a lot,” says Dr. Jean-François Delahaye, representative of the institution.
Tensions between the “ogre of aesthetics” and order? Not at all, however, assures the trained surgeon. He confirms that the clinic may have been forced to modify certain contracts which did not properly guarantee the doctors’ conditions of practice (patient monitoring, independence of medicine, non-commercial practices, etc.). However, Dr Delahaye refuses to speak of any confrontation: “There is no systematic opposition between us. We are in dialogue, without blockages.” The two actors must “take stock” soon.
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