Mojjo Tattoo Studio: A Budding Business of an Artist

Introduction

Indian economy is growing with brisk growth rate. ¹ Many opportunities are emerging in market. Various business avenues are coming in market. With this many businessmen are starting their ventures. One of the growing markets in India is young population. So, there are good opportunities for products and services pertaining to youngsters. One of them is to tattooing services. At present, this business is grown in various cities of India.

About Tattoo

The word tattoo is an eighteenth-century word derived from the Polynesian word tatau, which means to be ‘correct, workmanlike’. The concept of the tattoo was first introduced in Europe in the eighteenth century. At that time the tattoo was perceived as a drawing of something on the body. A tattoo is a form of body modification, made by inserting indelible ink into the dermis layer of the skin to change the pigment. Tattooing is a process of implanting of permanent pigment granules in the skin.

There are five different types of tattoos, namely traumatic tattoos, amateur and professional tattoos, cosmetic, functional and medical tattoos. Traumatic tattoos are developed with coal dust, which remain permanent on the human body. They cannot be removed as ink of these tattoos spread deep into the layers of the skin. Amateur and professional tattoos are drawn to represent particular group. Mostly, criminals use this type of tattoo. Sometime this type of tattoo is used for identification of a particular person. In India this tattoo is very famous. Cosmetic tattoo includes various cosmetic surgeries with the use of natural colour. Cosmetic surgery continues to see a trend of increased popularity for both surgical and noninvasive procedures. Permanent makeup is the use of tattoos to enhance eyebrows, lips and eyeliner. Functional tattoos are used primarily for a purpose other than aesthetics. One such use is to tattoo Alzheimer patients with their name, so they may be easily identified if they go missing. Medical tattoo is used for few medical treatments. In few countries, medical tattoos are used to represent the medical information about the wearer. All these tattoos are permanent, as well as temporary. Permanent tattoos remain for the whole life, whereas a temporary tattoo has a short life. While tattoos are considered permanent, it is sometimes possible to remove them, fully or partially, with laser treatments. Ink or colouring applied to the surface of the skin is sometimes referred to as a ‘tattoo’. Mehndi, also known as henna, has been around since the twelfth century, allegedly originating from ancient India. It is also a traditionally Hindu method of staining the skin, and a custom that encompasses North Africa, South Asia and the Middle East as well.

There are various styles of tattoo such as black-and-grey, sleeve tattoo, Borneo traditional tattooing, criminal tattoo, Irezumi, traditional Japanese tattoo finger moustache tattoo, genital tattooing, lower back tattoo, Marquesan tattoo, pet tattoo sailor tattoos, swallow tattoo and water colour tattoos.

Craze for Tattoo

The craze for tattoo is increasing day by day among youngsters. The tattoo is preferred by youngsters due to various reasons such as to wear the memories for longer time, as a trend of fashion, to show their beauty, to represent their love or anger for someone or a particular group, to feel braver and to express yourself, etc. Some time they are made to remove skin problems, to make permanent make up on nail and lips, or to make design over nails. Sometimes, tattoos are also used to show their devotion towards a deity or god by making their picture tattoo on the body.

Process of Tattoo Making

The process of tattooing involves the insertion of pigment into the skin’s dermis. Traditionally, tattooing often involved rubbing pigment into cuts. Modern tattooing almost always requires the use of a tattoo machine and often procedures and accessories are used to reduce the risk to human health. Before making of tattoo, it is important to make a plan to get it done safely. The tattoo making process starts with deciding on a design or theme. Once a design or theme is decided, a rough sketch of design is prepared. Then, an appropriate location on the body is decided to draw a tattoo. It is made sure that the selected location is big enough for the size of the tattoo. Once the location is decided, the design for the tattoo is drawn with its outliners. After that different colour schemes are applied over it to make it more beautiful. In this step both artist and the one who wants to have the tattoo need to have passion as it hurts the person immensely during this process. After that, the artist bandages the area on which the tattoo is made, which person needs to keep for at least one or two hours. With the completion of this step, the tattoo-making process comes to an end, giving the person a desired tattoo.

Current Indian Market Scenario

In India, the tattoo making process started in early 1980 in Chennai, Tamil Nadu. In southern India, permanent tattoos are called pachakutharathu. In northern India, permanent tattoos are called godna. In the states of north-east, tattoos have been used as cultural symbols. Mehndi is one of the famous tattoos in India from ancient time. Normally, girls applied mehndi as tattoo during a marriage function. In India, for many people, tattoo is a medium of fashion. Few people also use it is as medium of self-expression. In year 2015, there are approximately 15,000 tattoo studios in India. Demand for tattoo studio is increasing in various cities such as Delhi, Chennai, Bangalore, Mumbai, Ahmedabad and Surat. Indians get tattoo made on various occasions such as birthdays, marriages and many other social functions. The growth rate of the tattoo market is 4–5 per cent in India.

Current Ahmedabad Market for Tattoo

Ahmedabad is a one of the leading and fastest growing cities of India. With a population of 6.3 million Ahmedabad is the seventh largest city of India. Ahmedabad is located on the banks of Sabarmati river and near the city of Gandhinagar, the capital of Gujarat. Ahmedabad is the second largest producer of textile products. After year 2000, many small and tiny businesses have been started in Ahmedabad. Amdavadis (people who staying in Ahmedabad) are fond of adopting new things and that is why new businesses get a good market in Ahmedabad.

In Ahmedabad, the craze for tattooing is increasing day by day due to a trend of fashion. Currently there are more than 100 tattoo studios in the city. Most of them are in west Ahmedabad. Ahmedabad has an approximately 60 per cent young population which falls between age group of 18 and 60 years. Moreover, Ahmedabad has 90 per cent literacy rate. It has cultural diversity, as apart from Gujaratis, Punjabis, Marathis, Tamils, Sindhis, Malayalis and Marwaris also stay here. The current size for the tattoo market in Ahmedabad is approximately 4–5 lakh. Roughly 2–2.2 lakh are females and 2.8–3 lakh are males. The market is growing annually at a rate of 5–6 per cent. Amdavadis have tattooed on occasions such as birthdays, marriages, college functions and many other social functions. Collegians are emerging and are becoming the fastest growing market in Ahmedabad.

Evolution and Growth of Mojjo Tattoo Studio

Vaishali Shah is an Electrical Engineering graduate by educational qualification. With a unique idea of making tattoo paintings on human body (tattooing), Vaishali Shah launched Mojjo Tattoo Studio (MTS) on 6 February 2010 at Nehrunagar cross road in the Ambavadi area of Ahmedabad. MoTS was started by Vaishali Shah to provide tattooing services to people. With the passage of time, tattoos have become a fashion trend among youngsters and collegians. The Studio currently offers Nail art, Nail extension, permanent body tattoo and temporary tattoo services. Permanent tattoos are offered for lifetime whereas temporary tattoos are offered on occasions of birthday celebration, festivals and on other special events for the duration of one day only.

The idea to start a tattooing business emerged from family members. Vaishali had a hobby of painting and one day her brother asked her to make tattoos on his body. She made a tattoo for her brother and found herself to be good at tattooing. Her brother gave her the idea to start a tattooing business. She pondered over her brother’s idea and after a few days she planned to do a tattooing course from Ahmedabad and Mumbai-based institutions. She completed a course and started making tattoos from home itself because in the initial period of business, she found that the business initially required very high investment. She advertised by distributing leaflets at snack parlours and other places where youngsters and collegians got together as they were the target market of MTS.

Day by day, Vaishali started to receive many inquires of tattoo making and finally she decided to start a tattoo studio in Ahmedabad. In line with this decision, the first studio of MTS was started at Kanchandeep Complex, an ambavadi area in Ahmedabad, on 6 February 2010, offering services of nail art and tattooing. Initially, MTS offered customized nail art drawing such as 2D, 3D, Bridal, Glitter, Valentine, Spring, and Butterfly art. In 2012, MTS started its teaching classes of tattoo and nail arts. In same year, MTS added the service of nail extension (nail extension is a process of increasing the length of nail in 2–3 hours) in their present service portfolio. Day by day the business grew, and 2014 MTS started to make event-specific offers such as birthdays, Navaratri festival, marriages, college functions, kitty party day offers, etc., tattooing.

With a growing business, MTS has made a geographical expansion by opening its second branch at the Paldi area in Ahmedabad. Vaishali found that there was no tattoo studio in area of Paldi. So, she found an opportunity to expand her business there. Moreover, there was an availability of tattoo experts in the Paldi area. In 2015, MTS started cosmetic tattoos (Vitiligo-white spot, eye brow, eye liner, lip liner) at both the branches. Presently, MTS has two branches and each branch offers services on the basis of prior appointment. MTS normally get customers inquiry from its website, through reference, advertisement through leaflets and advertising agencies based on Internet. The evolution and growth summary of MTS is shown in Table 1.

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Table 1.

Evolution and Growth Summary of MTS

Year	Location	No. of Persons Employed	Number of Customers	Size of Shop	Type of Business
2010	Kanchandeep Complex, Ambavadi area, Ahmedabad	2	8,000	Small	All types of tattoo making and tattoo removal
2014	Neelkanth Plaza, Paldi area, Ahmedabad	2	500	Small	All types of tattoo making

Source: Author.

MTS has made more services available to the customers, due to which there is very high increase in the number of customers in a short span.

Key Success Factors of MTS

Every business has some key success factors for its successful running. MTS has various key success factors such as pricing policy, promotion policy, maintenance of hygiene, finishing of art work and after service care (Figure 1). As the process of tattoo making requires safety during tattoo drawing process, maintenance of hygiene is an important aspect in tattoo drawing. Moreover, MTS offers the finishing of work art (design) in various varieties and after service care is also maintained. Because of this, MTS never faces customer-based problems and gets more business on reference basis. MTS has built a brand name of quality and service, and has emerged as a trustworthy tattoo studio.

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Figure 1.

Source: Author.

Promotion Policy

MTS uses social media for its business promotion. Social media, namely Facebook and WhatsApp, is used for the promotion of tattoo designing. On being asked about the selection of social media, Vaishali replied that as more and more youngsters and collegians are using smartphones and social media based on applications, she promotes various business offers through Facebook and WhatsApp. MTS also uses leaflets for circulation among customers and promote its business on internet advertisement firms.

MTS’s Customer Demographics, Psychographics and Objectives to Have Tattoo

Normally, MTS has customers in the age group of 15–60 years. Both men and women are its customers. Majority of the customers are educated, with an undergraduate, graduation, post-graduation background. Almost half of the customers are collegians. Mojjo also has receives professionals, salaried persons, business persons, government officers and housewives. Majority of the customers belong to the upper or middle class of the society. Customers desire to have a tattoo made because they want to express themselves, to represent particular group or community, to show their love, anger or any other feelings for someone or particular group, to be braver, etc. Sometimes, a tattoo is also done as part of fashion. Normally, college students get a tattoo made for the purpose of fashion. During the months of December and January, colleges in Ahmedabad have cultural functions. At that time, collegians get tattoos made according to a particular day or college function to show off. Apart from this, many times the people get a tattoo of a particular deity on the occasion of a festival to show their respect for a particular god or goddess. During shraavana, which is a holy month of Hindus, people get tattoos of Lord Shiva. Navaratri is one of the famous festivals of Gujarat. So, during Navaratri, many people get tattoos of goddess Ambica and Durga. These tattoos are preferred by people to show their devotion for gods and goddesses. Sometimes, customers want to have cosmetic tattoos. These types of tattoos are demanded by women for the purpose of permanent makeup, and hiding or neutralizing skin discolourations. Many times people suffering from leukoderma want medical tattoos to make their skin look natural colour.

Key Competitors with Their Strategies and Performance

The tattoo market in Ahmedabad is both organized, as well as unorganized. Normally, unorganized players are found on road side. Lal Darwaja is a famous area for such players. They can make only simple and basic tattoos. So, Mojjo does not face any competition from unorganized players as they cannot offer varieties that Mojjo can offer to the customers. But Mojjo has competition from organized studios. Players such as Aaryan Studio, and Black Stain tattoo studio are major competitors of MTS. Normally these competitors use offers and discounts for promotion of their services. They use social media namely, Facebook and Instagram for the promotion of their services and offers. Aaryan Studio offers flat 50 per cent discount. Aaryan also makes offers in terms of inches and rate of tattoos. In the same line, Black Stain Tattoo Studio offers all types of tattoos such as coloured tattoos, black and grey tattoos at very high discount. Black Stain Tattoo Studio normally uses psychological methods of pricing in their discount offers for a particular size of tattoos.

Strategies of MTS to Handle Competitors

In order to meet the competition, MTS uses multiple strategies. Since the beginning, Vaishali used strategies to counter the action of the competitors. One of the strategies is innovation of design. Vaishali uses Facebook and WhatsApp as tools of promotion of her work and studio. She regularly makes innovations in her services and designs as customers expect something new in her services which other players cannot able to give all time. This innovation helps MTS to retain customers and makes them more loyal towards studio. Moreover, Vaishali continuously develops new tattooing practices such as portrait tattoos, cosmetic tattoos and vitiligo cover up tattoo which other competitors cannot develop.

In normal tattoos, she gives different ideas to make customized tattoos which can enhance the customers’ personality. The second strategy is customization of tattoo designs. This approach of customization is an important strategy. This customized tattoo service results in positive word-of-mouth publicity for MTS, which leads to positive referencing. Because of this, MTS receives many walking clients and the studio able to cover uncaptured areas. Every design is used only once by Vaishali, and for every customer there is a new design. No single design is repeated. Use of new and unique design for every customer makes the customer to feel unique. It gives a new experience to customers. Vaishali regularly attends various tattoo conventions to keep herself updated. Thus, basically, she used the strategy of innovation in her work to make it more better than her competitors.

The third and fourth strategies used by Vaishali are best described by the Ansoff matrix, that is, product development and market development strategy. Vaishali started with one innovative service, that is, nail. Nail extension service is normally found in Western countries. As this product was new in the market a few years back, it was very difficult for her to get customers. So, she started adverting for making nail extensions in a short duration. Many customers responded to the advertisements and in a short duration of 1 year she got many customers. For a woman nails are medium to show her beauty. Nail art is one interesting tattoo for women customers. Thus, Vaishali made a combo offer of nail extension and nail art. Due to this offer, many women started to adopt nail extensions. Thus, Vaishali made the nail extension service successful by adopting the product development strategy.

Medical tattoos are famous among customers. Leukoderma is normal disease. Many times people suffering from leukoderma, experience ignorance from the society. So, for such people MTS offers medical tattoos. These types of tattoos were being developed since many years and were available in many cities of India. But in Ahmedabad, it was new. Thus, MTS developed the market for Medical tattoos. Vaishali Shah started to offer the medical tattoos to the people suffering from leukoderma. As these tattoos can change the colour of their skin and make it like natural skin. Thus, Vaishali made the implementation of medical tattoo successful by adopting the market development strategy.

Overall, innovation in service and design, product development, market development and customization are four strategies that MTS adopted to achieve success over their competitors and emerge as one of the leading tattoo makers in Ahmedabad.

Key Challenges Faced by the MTS to Grow and Sustain in Business

Vaishali Shah faced two basic problems when she started the tattoo business. The first problem was of location and second one of finance. As tattooing is a service, location is very important for sustainability and growth of business. She searched but could not find an appropriate location. Thus, initially she started the business from home itself. She searched for a good location for 8–10 months. She found a few locations, but these were available at very high rental cost, which could have affected the business profit. At other locations the shops were available, but it required high cost of investment. Vaishali could not afford these due to high cost. Ultimately, she got a good location in the basement at Kanchandeep Complex near Zansi ki Rani BRTS Bus station in the Nehrunagar area of Ahmedabad at cost of just INR 8 lakh. This location was good, but had one problem. In the basement, there was one neem tree. Due to the tree no one was ready to buy that shop. But as the cost of the shop was low, Vaishali brought it. She took the help of her husband Kamal Shah, an interior designer, and enhanced the tree with interior designing. Today that tree is the heart of MTS due to its interior decoration. People are just amazed to see the tree inside the studio and feel different. Thus, Vaishali faced two problems and one challenge of a tree growing inside her shop. But due to her capabilities and courage, she solved all the problems and started with business. As Vaishali faced financial shortage in the initial phase of the business, she took the premises on rent basis for during the initial years. As she became successful, the financial strength of MTS improved, which resulted in the conversion of rent-based assets into own assets.

The third problem that Vaishali faced was from the customer side. The Studio handled both male and female customers. Vaishali kept an attitude at the workplace which gave the male customers a straightforward message that she was only interested in making awesome tattoos. The entire premise of MTS was under the surveillance of CCTV cameras. Sometimes, after getting the tattoos, customers came up with some issues about the design or drawing. In order to overcome these issues, Vaishali employed staff to handle customer inquiry and preparation of tattoos. She first draws the design of the tattoo on paper and shows it to the customers. If the customer agreed on the design and drawing, he or she need to give an undertaking. Thus, Vaishali manages the customers at studio.

Future Plan

As the customer base from Baroda, Rajkot, Surendranagar and Surat is increasing, MTS is thinking of starting its business operations in these cities. This business is found to be attractive with an increase in the trend of tattooing among youngsters.

Moreover, MTS is planning to add some new services in the present service portfolio such as tattoo removal section, and portrait tattoo. Tattoo removal is a process of removing permanent tattoos. Portrait tattoo is a tattoo that is drawn from a picture or sketch. Thus, MTS has plans to start these two new services for its customers.

Issues for Discussion