Tattoo Industry and Culture (part 3)
[The last installment of my article focuses on what one tattoo artist, Brian Brenner of the Dayton area, does to thrive in this growing industry. I hope to be back next week with a story behind someone's ink--what I love most about tattoos!]


With tattoos being such a growing business, Brenner has focused on setting his tattoo shop apart. He has turned to marketing online and in prominent tattoo magazines to get the name of Truth & Triumph out there.

“When we were talking about doing the logo, I said, ‘I want it as memorable as the Nike swoosh’,” Brenner said.

Brenner showing me the different ways he has marketed his tattoo shop online, both on the shop website and the shop's Facebook page.

“I like everybody knowing what we’re doing,” he said. “I like being on TV; I like being in tattoo magazines; I like all the glitter, you know what I mean?”
He said not only does he like people knowing Truth & Triumph, but he also likes being able to supply people with jobs because of the prestige of the shop. In addition to the tattoo artists working for him, Brenner also has people for marketing, including a guy who takes care of all the promotional events and Facebook page.

All this marketing is especially important to Brenner because he foresees the tattoo industry becoming like any other job fairly soon. He used the example of how many people can list off some prominent tattoo artists now because of the popular television shows. He said that if you would have asked someone five years ago to name one tattoo artist, the average person couldn’t do it. But he sees all that changing.

He said: “In five more years I’m going say, ‘how many tattooers to you know?’ and you’re going to be like ‘dude, f---, I know like twenty-five,’ you know what I’m saying? And then five years from then, when you go ‘how many tattooers do you know?’ and it’s going to be like barbers. … It will be like everything else. That’s one thing that I see changing.”

He naturally sees this shift to be both positive and negative.

“It’s good for the tattoo industry because more money is going to flow through the hands of tattooers,” Brenner said, “but at the same time it’s going to suck for people that are already in it and have been on ‘easy street’ for so long, because the competition is going to get tough.”

And Brenner said that it is not just marketing that sets his shop apart in the industry, but that it is also the caliber of his artists. He said that though he used to apprentice all the guys that came to work for him, over time, experienced artists were coming from other shops to work at Truth & Triumph. Brenner said that the creative environment at his shop is what those artists find attractive. Most of his artists are young and come from heavy art backgrounds, and many of them are involved in music as well. He also said that when it comes to the art, especially, he wants Truth & Triumph to have a certain “echelon” and really set the standard for what people should be doing in the tattoo business.