Lumenis Brand Guidelines: ESC Medical, Sharplan Lasers and a Yokneam Vision Business

Two Israeli laser firms under one new name.

Lumenis grew out of two Israeli companies. The younger was ESC Medical Systems, founded in 1992 by Shimon Eckhouse and Hillel Bachrach, according to Hebrew Wikipedia. Eckhouse had worked on lasers for years before he returned to Israel in 1991 with the idea of using high-power pulsed light for medical and cosmetic work such as hair and tattoo removal — the technology now known as intense pulsed light, or IPL. Hebrew Wikipedia says the company began selling its first products in 1994, received US Food and Drug Administration clearance to market them in August 1995, and listed its shares on Nasdaq in January 1996. Its early backers included a venture fund called Medmax.

The older company was Laser Industries, founded in 1972 by the engineer Uzi Sharon and the surgeon Isaac Kaplan and based at Kiryat Atidim in Tel Aviv. Its surgical laser was called the Sharplan, a name made from Sharon and Kaplan, Hebrew Wikipedia says. At the end of 1997 ESC bought Laser Industries through an exchange of shares, adding lasers to its pulsed-light range.

In 2001 the merged company changed its name to Lumenis, and in the same year, Hebrew Wikipedia says, it bought the medical division of the American laser maker Coherent, financed partly by a bank loan.

Crisis, private owners and a split.

The early 2000s were difficult. Hebrew Wikipedia says that at the end of 2003 Lumenis cut about 300 jobs under a recovery plan, that Bank Hapoalim became its effective controlling party through a debt arrangement, and that its shares left Nasdaq for the over-the-counter “pink sheets” after its auditor, Deloitte, declined to sign off its third-quarter 2003 accounts. The US Securities and Exchange Commission then brought a case. CFO magazine reported in February 2009 that the SEC had alleged that, from at least late 2001 to early 2003, revenue at Lumenis was fraudulently inflated through improperly recognised sales; the company settled, and the SEC revoked the registration of its securities in April 2006.

New owners followed. Hebrew Wikipedia says control passed in 2006 to the Viola investment group and Idan Ofer’s Ofer Hi-Tech fund, which steadied the business, and Harel Beit-On has chaired the board since that year; Lumenis returned to Nasdaq in February 2014, was taken private in 2015 by the XIO fund, and in February 2020 was sold to Baring Private Equity Asia.

The biggest change came in 2021. Globes reported on 1 September 2021 that Boston Scientific had completed its purchase of the Lumenis surgical business — the urology and ear, nose and throat lasers, fibres and accessories — and would keep that operation in Yokneam. The paper noted that Boston Scientific had already sold the Lumenis urology lasers, including its MOSES technology, in the United States and Japan for more than twenty years under a distribution arrangement. The rest of Lumenis — its aesthetic and ophthalmic lines — with about 1,000 employees in its laser and radio-frequency activities, stayed with its owner under chief executive Tzipi Ozer-Armon, who has led the company since 2012.

Hebrew Wikipedia describes the company’s headquarters in Yokneam, in northern Israel, as housing its offices, laboratories, production halls and warehouses. Lumenis says it has more than 80,000 systems installed and sales in more than 100 countries, and that it remains a portfolio company of Baring Private Equity Asia, with offices on four continents and nearly 1,500 staff.

Instruments, clinics and congresses.

Ophthalmic device makers sell to a narrow, expert audience: ophthalmologists, optometrists, opticians and hospital buyers. Their brochures and websites tend to follow a shared visual grammar. The instrument itself is usually the hero, photographed on a plain white or pale grey ground so that every knob, lens and joystick reads clearly, with the maker’s name small on the housing.

A second register places the same equipment in use. Slit lamps, fundus cameras and refraction units appear in clinic rooms, with a practitioner on one side of the chin rest and a patient on the other; surgical microscopes and laser systems are shown in operating theatres, with a surgeon at the console. Screens matter as much as hardware in this category, so many images show scans, maps or software views alongside the machine.

The third register is explanatory. Cross-section diagrams of the eye, showing the cornea, lens and retina, are used to explain what a device measures or treats, and many makers publish training material and webinars for clinicians. Because these are regulated medical products, some product pages note that a model is available only in certain markets.

Much of the category’s public life happens at congresses. Makers launch and demonstrate equipment on exhibition stands at meetings such as the ESCRS congress in Europe and the annual meeting of the American Academy of Ophthalmology, as well as at optical trade fairs, and their news pages often follow that calendar. This guide sets out what can be checked about each brand: who founded it, who owns it now and where it says its products are made.

Aesthetics and eyes under one name.

Today Lumenis divides itself into two businesses, Aesthetics and Vision, under the line “BeautyTech for Life.” The eye-care side, which the company calls Lumenis Vision, covers areas on its website including dry eye, glaucoma and retina. For dry eye it sells OptiLIGHT, an IPL system, alongside the OptiPLUS and OptiLIFT devices; for glaucoma it offers Selecta SLT and YAG lasers, including the Digital Duet and Digital Trio platforms; and for the retina it lists photocoagulators such as the Smart532 and the multi-wavelength Vision One, together with slit lamps and laser indirect ophthalmoscopes. It also lists the Antares corneal topographer for dry-eye analysis and a version of its ULTRApulse Alpha laser for oculoplastic work around the eyelids.

The company tells a long story about that ophthalmic line. Lumenis says it pioneered the first argon laser photocoagulator for ophthalmology, was the first approved marketer of Nd:YAG photodisruptor lasers, introduced multicolour photocoagulation with the first laser indirect ophthalmoscope, and developed selective laser trabeculoplasty, or SLT. Those are the company’s own claims.

The Lumenis name itself dates only from 2001. On its website, lumenis.com, it covers both hair-removal and skin platforms and retinal lasers, with the Vision and Aesthetics names marking the two sides.

For a design guide, Lumenis shows how one invented name can cover two merged laser companies and a split into separate businesses. Compare IRIDEX, an American maker of ophthalmic lasers, and Quantel Medical, a French maker of ophthalmic equipment. For this guide we use a violet, a deep night tone and a green with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Lumenis’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.