For Foremed Legend, the end of February is a very special period of time.

Although the company was registered and established in September 2021, it was not until after the Spring Festival in 2022 that it really began to systematically develop product research and development. The first batch of core R&D personnel recruited locally in Suzhou joined the company in early March. To this day, these colleagues are still the backbone of Foremed Legend's R&D.

After starting a business, I always felt that time passed quickly. Three years passed in the blink of an eye. The scene at that time is still vivid in my mind. The first and most confusing problem we encountered was: how to determine the product definition?

Translated into plain language, it means: what do we want to make the product like? As of Q4 2024, Foremed Legend has been approved for a total of 6 medical device registration certificates, including 2 Class III certificates and 4 Class II certificates. It is no exaggeration to say that these products are actually our exploration in confusion.

Looking back now, to make a good product, you need to do a complete market research first, concretize the product definition in the R&D project, and then you need to conduct comprehensive sourcing of the supply chain, which can only solve the feasibility assessment. After determining the feasibility, the prototype needs to be fully engineered before type inspection, registration and physical examination can be carried out. Even if the registration certificate and production license are successfully obtained, the engineering details in the conversion process must still be handled and the challenges of mass production ramp-up must be faced.

This is a complex and lengthy process. For a startup, it is almost impossible to achieve a high level in every link because resources are very limited. As mentioned before, there is a widespread "three-pat" phenomenon in startups: patting the forehead for decision-making, patting the table for discussion, and patting the thigh for review.

Therefore, I often tell my colleagues that admitting one's ignorance is a virtue.

We can summarize the past three years as the Foremed Legend 1.0 era. The product successfully obtained the registration certificate, and the performance is not bad. At least the measured performance parameters are not inferior to those of international mainstream equipment. The quality system also has a preliminary framework, which can at least guarantee daily operation. I happened to be doing a review of the ISO13485 system in recent days, and I believe we can pass it smoothly. Looking back at the past three years from today's perspective, there are too many areas that need to be improved, but fortunately, we have gone through these complex and long processes, and in the process, we have accumulated some useful knowledge.

However, these initial accumulations cannot guarantee the market's recognition of Foremed Legend. Although domestic equipment naturally has a price advantage compared to imported equipment, from the current pricing system, our products still lack a distinct differentiation advantage. Cost-effectiveness has never been simply a low price, but it must be able to deliver the corresponding market value. However, the entire dermatology market has been in a very turbulent state in the past two years, and the demand for equipment products has also been differentiated. Our existing products are completely benchmarked against international mainstream products in terms of performance, and it is difficult to meet the differentiated needs of different customers.

For picosecond lasers, this product was first developed to meet the needs of tattoo removal in the US market, so it requires very high peak power and very short pulse width output. However, in the Chinese market, picosecond lasers are mostly used for whitening and freckle removal, and there is not much demand for tattoo removal. Among them, whitening requires a low-energy large spot scan. There is no particularly high requirement for peak power, but the spot is required to be uniform and the energy is stable, which is completely different from the use scenario of tattoo removal.

Recently, I have seen many people talking about the concept of "photoelectric supermarket". I think it is very interesting. Products with low risk and high cost performance, such as picosecond whitening, must be the first choice of photoelectric supermarket. However, as far as I have seen, almost all manufacturers' publicity is now focused on short pulse width and high peak power, which is actually far from the real needs of the market. Going further, if the product definition is more specific and some unnecessary peak parameters are abandoned, can a lower-cost technical implementation path be found? Reducing product costs while focusing on the actual needs of users and lowering the operating threshold may be a more efficient way to break through.

I am very optimistic about the development trend of doctor entrepreneurship. Doctor clinics will inevitably be one of the core forces in the skin market, and the law of the global market is also the same. But according to my personal field visits, the demand for photoelectric equipment in doctor clinics is completely different from that of "photoelectric supermarkets". Most doctors' clinics have the need to treat multiple skin problems, but the area of ​​the clinic is generally not large, so it is difficult to purchase many devices. They prefer an integrated multi-functional treatment platform, where one device can meet multiple treatment needs. However, domestic equipment has not yet made particularly good products on the comprehensive energy platform. In the next few years, there will be very large market opportunities in this direction.

Finally, there is the development trend of intelligence. Recently, due to the popularity of DeepSeek, many friends are talking about the application scenarios and business opportunities of AI in the skin market, but I think most of the discussions are just formalities. The degree of digitization in the medical beauty market is still at a very primitive stage, and the intelligence of products is basically at the level of big brothers and BB machines. Don't compare it with the manufacturing industry first, just look at dentistry and ophthalmology, which are still a long way behind. This field has not even achieved the most basic data interconnection. The first thing to do is to break through the barriers between skin detection images and treatment parameters, which are now completely separated. Due to regulatory policies, all imported medical beauty optoelectronic equipment cannot be connected to the Internet, and naturally cannot carry out digital extension business. At the same time, the data from the skin detector cannot match the treatment data at the back end, so in this direction, Foremed Legend has a great latecomer advantage, and hopes to make some meaningful attempts this year.

Today's reflections and summaries are the core strategies for Foremed Legend's development in the next three years: differentiated product definitions, focus on segmented market needs; break down barriers to diagnosis and treatment data, and try to build a digital system.

Medical devices are a strictly regulated industry, and product iteration is also a very tortuous process. I hope that looking back three years later, today's reflections will make Foremed Legend in the 2.0 era an outstanding technology company.

Foremed Legend founder Xia Yuqing

Early morning of February 25, 2025, at the dormitory of CEIBS

Foremed Legend

The core founding team of Suzhou Foremed Legend Medical Technology Co., Ltd. comes from Peking University and other well-known universities at home and abroad. Foremed Legend focuses on the design, research and development and application of high-end medical aesthetic optoelectronic equipment based on compliance and product strength, and is committed to becoming a leading enterprise in the field of high-end medical aesthetic optoelectronic equipment, a provider of integrated diagnosis and treatment intelligent solutions, and a pioneer of medical aesthetic data integration platform.

Through the development of a series of underlying key technologies, Foremed Legend has independently developed a number of high-end medical devices, including picosecond laser therapy devices, long pulse laser therapy devices, intense pulsed light therapy devices, photoacoustic imaging skin detection devices, and cold air therapy devices. It continues to deepen the research and development of core product technologies, and use better technical solutions to benefit the vast number of beauty seekers.

Adhering to the principle of technology for good, Foremed Legend will work with industry and ecological partners to bring more safe and effective medical beauty optoelectronic equipment and integrated diagnosis and treatment solutions to the global medical beauty market.