Bandit Studio’s Bruno Levy has a new venture offering cheap tattoos with big customer rewards
Tiny Zaps looks set to disrupt tattooing in a major way in the coming months with a business model that not only puts customers first – but rewards them in a way the industry never has.
The idea – from digital entrepreneur, Sam Kelly and his favourite tattooist, Bandit Studio owner Bruno Levy – will make getting a tattoo easier than ever, at just $100 for a thirty-minute slot, and introduce a coffee card culture of rewards and discounts to an industry yet to even embrace card payments.
Tattooing has ballooned into a multi-billion dollar industry – reportedly worth USD 1.89 billion globally in 2022 and set to almost double to USD 3.93bn by 2030 – and more than a third of Americans, 32%, and slightly fewer Brits, 26% – have one. Yet, the experience of getting inked has largely remained unchanged or gotten worse, due to the very cultural forces that have made it so popular.
Celebrities getting marked and brands wanting to cash in have driven up prices and created a red-rope industry around some of the most sought-after artists, and social media algorithms have made stars of others willing to play the influencer game, and ghosts of those that don’t, further exacerbating the problem.
Tattoos have gotten more expensive; appointments harder to get.
Tiny Zaps, as the name suggests, may be a small solution to a growing problem: Where to get a tattoo for cheap, now, and will service the expanding market of people wanting small tattoos and help them from the comfort of their phone.
Tattooing is finally going digital.
The popularity of small tattoos was driven by the evolution and popularity of single-needle tattooing. The delicate yet detailed designs – due to thinner line weights – made getting inked more attractive to a wider audience put off by heavy, bold lines, requiring large amounts of bodily real estate, and often a preconceived notion they need a significant reason, or story, behind them.
Less visibility, less risk, wider appeal.
The first Tiny Zaps location is expected to open in the coming months. Levy and Kelly were scouting sites across Manhattan and Brooklyn before Christmas and have broader plans to roll out the concept – once proven – to other locations like Los Angeles, Las Vegas and Austin.
“We’ve also talked about a mobile tattoo experience. Festivals, conferences, etc. Not in the short term but down the line, for sure,” Kelly told Parloir.
Levy has been promoting the concept with a raffle for a free tattoo on Instagram and has already been tattooing some of the Tiny Zaps’ forever-expanding catalogue of artwork at Bandit Studio.
Levy, a video-artist-turned-tattooist and fashion designer, says he noticed “many people” wanting to get small tattoos who didn’t know “where to go” to get them.
While the proliferation of private studios in recent years “addressed a lot of changes people wanted for their tattoo experiences”, Levy, who learned to tattoo in Nepal in 2007 but didn’t make a job of it until 2015, says they remain “less accessible” to the general public as they’re often only known through word of mouth or social media.
At $100, Tiny Zaps will commodify tattoos again for the general populous and open the door to people too scared to enter a traditional shop for a simple design, or put off by minimum rates that often don’t reflect the simplicity of the work involved.
Levy, who is already well-known for doing smaller tattoos, says people shouldn’t have to pay several hundred dollars for a small tattoo – which isn’t uncommon.
“Over the last few years, I’ve been gravitating away from smaller tattoos unless booked in larger sessions due to the bad economics of delivering small tattoos i.e. needing to charge $300+ for something that takes 10 minutes, but there’s still a super strong demand for this from my clients,” he said.
“Tiny Zaps is my outlet to be able to provide this service while continuing to evolve as an artist and not need to charge crazy minimums.”
Levy says the tattoo industry and its clientele have evolved, with more “middle-aged women” looking to get inked. Social media is awash with small tattoos, worn like jewellery, adorning hands, arms, necks, tummies and torsos. Some fans have just one or two; others display bodysuits’ of stamp-size markings.
While not looking to turn the tattoo shop experience into a nail salon for mums on the run, Tiny Zaps, Levy explains, is trying to “create a place where people love coming to get tattoos and are excited about their tattoos for the rest of their life while staying true to the craft. We don’t believe they’re mutually exclusive.”
Kelly adds that there are still “lots of barriers for people in their tattoo journey” which led him to think there was a gap in the market for a business offering Tiny Zaps: “Tattoos don’t have to be intimidating… and there’s big demand for this product and nobody properly servicing it.”
While tattoos start at $100, Tiny Zaps will offer more sophisticated designs for more, but the big difference is the discounts. Customers wanting two tattoos get 15% off; 20% if they want three, 25% for four. They can also earn a free tattoo with a loyalty card, gift a tattoo and book a chat with a “stylist”.
Tiny Zaps designs, Levy explains, looks to “strike a balance between being reproducible by any Tiny Zaps tattooist while also being unique and representative of the artist’s larger body of work.”
To achieve this, Levy and Kelly have set defined line weights, only allowing solid fills or outlines – no shading – and for the “most part” a maximum of two colours per design.
“Many – but not all – designs will be available in different inks including black, red, and blue which will all be customisable within the digital browsing experience (example),” Levy said.
The Tiny Zaps design gallery has been built-out with Levy’s signature bubblegum-tattoo-style designs, but the company is partnering with tattooists, and other artists, to create an extensive library and offer them a passive-income – the details of which are still being finalised.
Tiny Zaps is offering artists of “other mediums”, like musicians with die-hard fans, the opportunity to see their work as tattoos, “the opportunities are endless”, Levy says, noting they already have one musician on board who has “tattooed himself before and has some pretty dedicated fans”.
“We love the idea of fans being able to rep their favourite artist in ways that aren’t just a logo but designs drawn by that musician, illustrator, artist, etc.”
The Tiny Zaps library already contains over 500 unique designs, but when variations – including fonts, fills and patterns – are added it swells to over 1,000.
Kelly, whose background is in tech and startups, said: “By partnering with artists to provide designs – and compensating them for it – it can help us stay true to the craft, have a differentiated offering, and not just be a vending machine of Pinterest designs while still serving the gap in the market.
“But the exciting thing is we already have a handful of artists stoked on the idea and want to contribute designs to the Tiny Zaps library.”
Levy said the “main focus” when it comes to designs it that the tattoos have “enough simplicity to work on a small scale but will stand the test of time and age well.”
“Styles will naturally vary more and more as we continue partnering with artists to submit designs. It’s been great to hear from artists who may not do a lot of small tattoos get excited about exploring this form of artistic expression, and make their art accessible in cities they aren’t located or don’t travel to.”
Source: Bandit Studio owner and Tiny Zaps partner, Bruno Levy
Levy is recruiting tattooists to administer the designs and both he and Kelly see Tiny Zaps as a “big opportunity” to modernise the “shop pig” tattoo apprentice culture which is often criticised as being exploitive.
Kelly, who has almost a dozen tattoo from Levy, took the Tiny Zaps concept to him to get “feedback on the artist” side of the business, and over three hours of dowing bourbon, the ideas didn’t stop flowing.
But for now, the focus is on nailing a single shop.
“It’s fun to dream about 100s of Tiny Zaps locations all over the world, but at this stage, it’s most important to me to build a dope brand and a customer experience that wows consumers,” Kelly concluded.
“If we’re laser-focused on happy customers and amazing experiences, the rest will follow.”
See Tiny Zaps’ Instagram page here.
Find out more on the Tiny Zaps website here.
