With the ever ubiquitous and increasing popularity of tattoos, new artists as well as new studios come along at a crazy train pace. Some last and gain heaps of notoriety, while others fade away, never to be heard from again (or so it seems). As a fan of tattoo art and tattooists, I like to try and keep up with any and all info on new shops that are being opened and learn a little about the tattooist(s) involved. So if you’re out there and you’ve recently opened a shop or you plan to, drop me a line over here at the Tattoo Blog headquarters and tell me a little bit about yourself and your set up. If I like what I see, I’ll contact you for an interview.
Anyway, all that being said, I thought that today I would focus on a newly opened studio in Germantown, Maryland. X2 Ink has been open since May of 2010 and it is the culmination of a lot of hard work, saving pennies and just plain business savvy on the part of tattooists Aurorae Dye and Ryan Jordan. This isn’t their first foray into tattoo studio ownership though, the two friends have been business partners since running their previous shop, X-Dream X-Pressionz, back in 2006. They learned a few tricks of the trade along the way and applied some of that knowledge in opening X2 Ink.
‘To mitigate the risk of opening a new shop in an economic downturn, the partners invested the profits they had saved from their first shop and kept expenses low by painting the shop themselves and relying heavily on word-of-mouth and what Dye calls “hand-to-hand” promotion.
“It’s mostly sheer devotion,” she said.’
I think that it’s also worth at least mentioning that both Aurorae Dye and Ryan Jordan are women. Though there are many successful and talented women within the tattoo industry, it still remains an industry that is primarily dominated by men. When all is said and done, it doesn’t matter if you are female or male when it comes to how well you tattoo, but having more women tattoo shop owners out there can certainly help dispel the myth that women aren’t as good as men when it comes to laying down some quality ink.
Check out X2 Ink!