Dr. Quinton Chivers (right) and his partner in business and in life, Dr. Renita Ahluwalia (left)SUPPLIED
The cosmetic health care industry has experienced unprecedented demand during the pandemic as more people prioritize their appearance alongside health and wellness.
Take the Canadian Dermatology Centre, the Canadian Plastic Surgery Centre and the Canadian Hair Transplant Centre, three state-of-the-art aesthetic practices in Toronto co-founded by doctors Quinton Chivers and his partner in business and in life, Renita Ahluwalia.
The couple started the first centre three years ago, run mainly by the two of them, and have since expanded to three centres with nine dermatologists, five general practitioners, three plastic surgeons and more than 30 support staff including nurses, laser technicians, professional skin care consultants, hair transplant specialists as well as several much-needed administrators.
“The cosmetic industry across Canada has really grown during the pandemic. Maybe there’s less money being spent on travel and entertainment, but it’s allowed for more funds to be available for aesthetic services,” Dr. Chivers says.
The centres were able to keep up with the growth largely due to the flexible solutions available from innovative companies such as Square, the software, payments and hardware solutions provider that the centres have been using since 2019.
“Square was really helpful,” Dr. Chivers says.
As many health care services made the switch to online during the pandemic, their digital transformation hastened by public health shut-downs, the centres were able to keep pace and offer many consultation and follow-up appointments virtually. The centres also started to use Square Appointments for their non-medical cosmetic consulting sides of the business.
Dr. Ahluwalia and Dr. Chivers consult with a patient at their Toronto businessSUPPLIED
“We were able to greatly help our patients that way,” Dr. Chivers says. “A lot of medicine still needs to be done in-person but there are certainly aspects of care and administration that can be performed virtually just as effectively as coming into the clinics.”
Dr. Chivers has had multiple merchant terminals at his businesses over the years but needed a solution that could scale with his operations and categorize many different services and practitioners.
“With multiple physicians, we need to account for different providers, estheticians and consultants. We need to track sales and inventory of multiple different products correctly,” he says.
The Canadian Dermatology Centre is a L’Oréal flagship store for Skinceuticals medical-grade skin care and offers a full slate of aesthetic and cosmetic procedures and surgeries.
“There is a lot of inventory and a lot of these products are really expensive, so you don’t want anything to go missing,” Dr. Chivers says. “Square just allowed us to track inventory a lot better, as well make sure products were in stock, manage supply chain issues, and just be able to pay our different providers and dermatologists.”
The centre has almost a dozen Square Terminals in the offices for in-person payments and uses the Square Virtual Terminal and Square Invoices software for accepting payments online. It also uses the Square Loyalty program and Square Online store.
Very recently, it added Square Marketing tools to the mix.
“That’s been something we’ve been really waiting for, to help develop newsletters and mailing lists for existing clients,” he says.
Square strives to provide a flexible set of solutions to help businesses grow with ease. Its wide array of solutions integrates seamlessly, with open access via its custom application programming interface (API) integrations that fit with existing business setups.
The Square tools are easily integrated into the growing virtual businesses, Dr. Chivers says, allowing practitioners to generate quotes and easily convert them to invoices and then track payments.
Clients can order skin care products online, pay and take advantage of the loyalty program enabled by Square, which allows the centre to customize its own loyalty program into the system.
“It’s been great for the patients that can save up to an additional 20 per cent off. They don’t have to come in and they can order their products online,” he says. “That’s been a win-win in terms of the revenue generation for us, as well as convenient for the patient.”
The Square dashboard provides a well laid-out analysis of where daily, monthly and yearly sales are at, providing the business with a focus for future growth and showing it what needs more attention, he says.
He credits Square for helping to contribute to the rapid growth of the business, even in turbulent times.
“There’s more to Square than just being a merchant terminal,” Dr. Chivers says. “I feel like I’m a Square spokesperson but they’re not giving me anything to do this. I really love the products.”
Advertising feature produced by Globe Content Studio with Square. The Globe’s editorial department was not involved.