The Case Study We Did Not Publish: How JONTELASER Vets Client Stories

Most aesthetic device manufacturers publish a client case study for every market they enter. We publish far fewer, and this article sets out the standard a client story must clear: what we record, what we delete, and why several attractive stories never got past our own review.

What follows is not a marketing brief. It is the internal specification our export team works to when it prepares the client-case section of a product page — six required fields, desensitisation red lines, one acceptable proof per claim type, and a fixed list of sentences we are not allowed to write — reproduced here with the client records it protects left out.

Why an Inquiry Is Not a Case Study

A case card starts from inquiry records, quotation drafts and our own published visit and exhibition reports. Auditing those sources in September 2026, one problem stood out: inquiry records capture what a buyer wanted, not what happened afterwards.

A record showing that a distributor asked for a private-label microwave platform with custom casing is a lead, not a case. Turning it into a case without a delivery date and a documented outcome means inventing the part that matters most to a clinic reading it. Every candidate now carries a status field, and only entries confirmed as delivered move forward.

The Six Fields Every Case Card Must Fill

The structure is fixed, so two people preparing the same case apart in time produce the same document.

Field	Required content	What we reject
Country	English country name, matching the site language	A flag emoji alone, or a two-letter abbreviation
City	Written only when confirmed	A province standing in for a city, or a city inferred from a company name
Client name	Organisation type, city and country; trading name reduced to an initial and asterisks	A full legal company name, or any individual’s name
Pain point	The buyer’s situation at the time of purchase, in one sentence containing a conflict	Product specifications, or “the client wanted to buy a machine”
Resolution	What was actually delivered — configuration, training, documentation, price structure	Adjectives such as “professional service and a high-quality solution”
Feedback	Verifiable behaviour first, a client quotation second	Any performance percentage without a document behind it

The feedback field most often comes back empty, which reflects the gap between an inquiry log and a delivery record.

The Evidence Ladder: One Proof Per Claim Type

Each category of feedback has one acceptable form of proof. A photograph of a room is not a substitute for a contract.

Claim	Acceptable evidence	Does not count
Repeat or add-on order	Order number or proforma invoice record	“They are very happy with it”
Deployment at a second site	Contract, or a signed chat record	A photograph of a different treatment room
Referral to another clinic	A lead record for the referred party	“They recommend us to everyone”
Single unit to territory agreement	Signed distribution contract	A discussion about exclusivity
Site photograph or video	Written consent from everyone visible	Cropping or blurring faces

What Gets Deleted Before Publication

These rules separate a case study from a data-protection incident.

• Email addresses, mobile and WhatsApp numbers, in any format, including inside screenshots
• Individual full names — clinicians, clinic owners and managing directors alike
• Street-level addresses, house numbers and postcodes belonging to a client
• CRM notes copied verbatim, and the contact block of any original inquiry screenshot
• Company names, logos, storefront photographs and patient before-and-after images used without written permission
• Every “likely” and “potential” qualifier, together with the guess it was attached to

That last point changes more sentences than the others. Where a record admits that a buyer’s identity is an inference from an email prefix, the inference goes, and the case keeps only the confirmed part.

The Photo Problem Nobody Talks About

In September 2026 we reviewed six client-supplied photographs for case sections. Four were plainly genuine clinic photography. Two were excluded: the rooms were too uniform, the hands did not connect to the handpieces convincingly, and no complete device was in frame. They may be serviceable treatment illustrations; they are not evidence that a client exists. All six also failed three checks — none could be tied to a country or city, none matched a confirmed model, and none came with written consent. Blurred faces are not consent, and none of the six appears in a published case section.

Two Stories That Did Clear the Bar

Not every story needs a feedback field. Two went public because every claim in them can be checked independently.

The Polish factory visit, January 2026. A delegation of Polish clients visited our factory at C12, Hegu Industrial Park, Chaoyang East Road, Zhuozhou City, Baoding, Hebei Province. The owner, sales team and R&D staff received them; the visit covered device demonstrations, certification review and a discussion of market requirements. That is the full extent of the published claim — no order value, no client name, no quotation. You can read it here: Polish clients visit the JONTELASER factory in Baoding.

Dubai Derma 2026, 8–10 September. Three days of live demonstration at Booth Z4E13, Zabeel Hall 4, Dubai World Trade Centre, across the CO2 fractional, HIFU, diode, RF microneedling and microwave lines. The recap carries no lead count and no tally of agreements signed, because a booth team’s recollection at the end of a three-day show is not a record. If those figures are reconciled against the CRM, they can be added.

Wording Rules We Enforce

We write	We never write
FDA-cleared, where a clearance applies to that device	FDA-certified, FDA-approved
An ISO 13485-certified quality management system	“Certified by every regulator in every market”
A figure attributed to the client as their own observation	A percentage presented as a clinical outcome
A repeat order within a stated number of months	An unsupported revenue growth percentage
“The device became the anchor of a new body contouring service line”	“Best-selling machine in the country”

The FDA clears devices; it does not certify them. A quotation draft we reviewed in 2026 described a regulatory package as “full FDA certifications”, and that was corrected to FDA clearance documentation plus whatever registration the buyer’s market requires. It tells a buyer something about the whole document.

What This Means If You Are Vetting a Supplier

• Ask for one case with a delivery date and a documented outcome, not a gallery of logos.
• Ask what was removed from that case before publication, and why.
• Ask for the consent status of every photograph, not just whether faces are blurred.
• Ask whether the certification wording on the website matches the certificate itself.

How to Submit a Case

If you are a clinic, distributor or academy, send the country; the city, if you are willing; your organisation type and how you wish to be identified; the constraint you had at purchase; what was delivered; what changed afterwards, with one supporting document; and written consent covering naming and image use. Complete cases typically go live within a month.

The short version: a client case study is a record with a date, a delivery and a document behind it. Everything else is a nice story; we would rather publish three of the first kind.