Tattoo partners make their mark in Germantown
Tattoo partners make their mark in Germantown
November 3, 2010
by Sharon Allen Gilder
Gazette.net
One kind of buzz at X2 Ink is the constant hum of liner guns, shader guns and electric needles. The other kind comes from the clients of Germantown's new tattoo, piercing and permanent makeup shop, which opened May 1.
Germantown resident Burnadette Nicholson recently stopped in for her first of several tattoos.
"I've been wanting to do it forever," she said. "I didn't have the money but I got a break so I just want to get it done. I think it's very beautiful and everybody tells their own stories with the tattoos."
Nicholson's comments fit with the philosophy of the shop's owners, friends Aurorae Dye and Ryan Jordan. The two women are on a mission to reinstate the integrity of the ornamental art form by focusing on pride in storytelling, self-image and enhancement.
"Tattoos are equivalent to today's T-shirt," Jordan said.
The Germantown shop is the second for Jordan and Dye — they opened their first, X-Dream X-Pressionz in Capitol Heights, on July 4, 2006.
Dye's family moved to Germantown when she was 4 years old and she grew up in the area. "It kind of made sense to expand the business to a new market where I was from," she said.
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.
The two spent a year and a half trying to find a spot with the right zoning. The City of Gaithersburg prohibits tattoo parlors within 1,000 feet of a school, church or residence and in a number of commercial zones. Montgomery County zoning is less restrictive, putting tattoo shops under the same guidelines as barber and beauty shops.
The body-adornment business was a shift for both partners. In high school, Dye was encouraged by her parents to climb the corporate ladder and Jordan was told by her father that there's no money in art.
"We can't hide from our work," Jordan said. "We want to be sure we're producing the best art we can."
But Dye's father was wrong when it comes to tattoo artists. The minimum charge for a tattoo is $50 with an hourly rate of $100 to $150, depending on the artist and her speed.
What was more challenging for Dye and Jordan was to break into a field that they say has been dominated by men.
"Most of the original tattoo artists are men," Dye said. "It's fairly new to have women in the industry. The men in the industry assume women aren't as good at it."
The majority of X2's customers are women ages 18 to 27, according to Dye and Jordan.
"We have all ages of men and women though," Dye said. "A woman 75 years old had stars put behind her ears to represent her six grandkids. She said it didn't hurt at all."
Personal stories behind tattoos are a big reason people get ink, Jordan said.
"We're also getting a lot of middle-aged clients to commemorate lost loved ones with hearts, sunflowers and ladybugs."
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