We haven’t been in touch for a while because we’ve been deeply immersed in a topic that is incredibly exciting and will fundamentally change the tattoo and piercing industry:
The AI
In this newsletter we will show you:
- AI is not a job killer and is not a real threat to creativity.
- In the tattoo and piercing business, her greatest potential lies in the area of organization and administration.
- It automates tedious tasks and frees up more time for creative work.
- She is not coming, she is already here.
AI as a job and creativity killer?
Many see their jobs and ways of working threatened. Social media is currently flooded with AI-generated images, videos, and music. Many are wondering how they can possibly keep up. And yes, in the consumer sector, a great deal will be driven by AI in the future, but we don’t see this happening in the truly creative field.
Because AI currently has the greatest impact in the field of software development and the greatest potential in the field of administration.
The calculation is quite simple: In almost all large companies (and government agencies), administrative costs account for approximately 30% of revenue. AI can already do better than (almost) any human: read texts and documents, formulate texts, speak (in >50 languages), recognize faces (identification), and process massive amounts of data. Administrative tasks are therefore ideally suited to be replaced by AI.
Let’s take the healthcare sector as an example: If you pay €1,000 a month for health insurance, at least €300 of that goes to the health insurance company for administration. Of the remaining €700, at least 30% goes to administration at doctors’ offices, hospitals, pharmacies, pharmaceutical companies, etc. That leaves a maximum of only €500 for actual healthcare services. And that’s a very optimistic estimate.
If AI saves 80% of these costs in the area of administration, this means an extra €400 per month for your healthcare, i.e., more money for nursing staff and doctors who are urgently needed.
AI in public administration is not a job killer. Rather, it offers, like no other measure, the opportunity to provide real added value without increased costs.
Administration in the Tattoo & Piercing Business
But how much overhead does a tattoo/piercing studio actually have? Well, if you don’t want to go bust at some point, it’s not much less than the aforementioned 30% of revenue.
- Inquiries
The percentage of tattoo inquiries that actually result in an appointment (conversion rate) is steadily decreasing. This means increasingly more work for answering and following up on inquiries. - Appointment bookings (tattoo/piercing)
The number of appointment cancellations and reschedulings has also increased. The effort required to fill these gaps and find alternative appointments is constantly growing. Managing deposits and appointment security deposits also needs to be done. - Customer Retention
It’s always significantly cheaper to retain an existing customer than to acquire a new one. But that doesn’t happen automatically. Those who offer professional follow-up services today have a clear advantage over the competition: “Is everything healing well?”, “We invite you for a follow-up appointment/touch-up/jewelry change…”, “Happy Birthday!”, … - Promotions
I can spend a lot of money if I, for example, promote a lottery campaign via Instagram/TikTok, or I can do it smarter and cheaper using my own data via an email or WhatsApp newsletter. Provided, of course, that I have the data. Data management is still vastly underestimated in our industry! - Documentation obligation
Often neglected until a claim for damages (for whatever reason) arrives and you desperately search for every scrap of paper that could help you in court.
This is just a brief overview of the tasks involved in studio administration. Additional responsibilities include accounting, purchasing, inventory (jewelry), and much more.
Same revenue, increasing profit
As you know, we also run a tattoo studio with six employees. And we, too, are feeling the massive changes in the tattoo market. Nevertheless, we’ve achieved two things over the past few years:
- Tattoo prices, revenue (appointment occupancy) and space rentals for our tattoo artists have remained constant.
- Our own revenue from studio management has steadily increased.
We didn’t achieve this by having our artists outshine the competition (even if they like to think otherwise). We achieved this through ever-improving customer service combined with increasing automation (i.e., decreasing personnel costs and workload).
And with the use of AI, our operational studio management is reduced to just one task: finding the right artist for a request and determining the price and duration.
AI and self-service handle 80% of studio management.
Over the past few months, we’ve been working intensively on an AI agent model that allows us to reach virtually every aspect of studio management. This agent model is currently being piloted in two studios and is proving not only incredibly efficient, but also to be of a higher quality than anything a shop manager could achieve. And that includes me.
For example: A customer booked a tattoo appointment with us but unfortunately had to cancel. Our AI scans such “interrupted” projects daily, reads the reason for the cancellation (from the appointment details and messages), and checks if a new appointment has already been booked. If not, it determines a suitable time to follow up (after 7 days for illness, after 3 days for cancellation due to work, etc.). If a follow-up is necessary, the AI suggests it and, upon request, drafts a corresponding message (email/SMS) to the customer. Naturally, it reads through previous messages to the customer and addresses important points (“We hope you’re feeling better now and wanted to check in…”). It checks whether any older messages could not be delivered (old mobile number) and will contact you automatically if it is missing any important information.
All I have to do is click “run”.
Between 15 and 30 such AI agents run daily, searching (for example, piercing) over 20,000 data records (all current customers, projects, appointments, messages), requiring less than 2 minutes and costing approximately €2-3 per day for a studio with 5 tattoo workstations and 3 piercing booths.
AI agents are now even capable of calling customers for you and conducting conversations of such high quality that it’s impossible to distinguish the AI from a human. We’ve refrained from using such telephone agents so far, as this doesn’t sit well with most people, at least not yet, and certainly not in our culture. By clicking “execute” and “send” myself, I, as the studio owner, remain in charge and the message to the customer ultimately comes from me.
The studio management is undergoing fundamental changes.
No matter how sophisticated your system for managing your requests and appointments is today: In this context, it is simply outdated. AI beats every system through its ability to process massive amounts of data in a very short time for an unbeatable price.
And all this without losing control. Each action is presented as a suggestion that you can accept, modify, or reject. Furthermore, such a system provides the incredibly reassuring feeling of never forgetting anything or anyone. Of course, this is only true if the AI simply processes all data sets every single time.
Of course, such agent models can be customized, allowing you to tailor them to your own priorities and philosophy.
When will AI arrive?
As I said, the pilots are already running and we will soon be adding two more studios to the program. But it would be a mistake to sit back and wait until the system is fully finished and available to everyone.
Because data is the backbone of automation and AI! And one clear rule applies:
Shit in – Shit out!
This means that the more data you collect today, and the better its quality, the greater the impact of AI agents will be. And I can say one thing from experience: everyone, absolutely everyone, in our industry needs to take action regarding their data. Either crucial information is completely missing (names, contact details, project descriptions, messages, etc.) or the quality is rather poor (duplicate customers, duplicate projects, canceled appointments, etc.).
Our recommendation is therefore: Start now!
Was kommt noch?
We gave a detailed presentation on “Automation and AI in the Tattoo & Piercing Business” at BMXnet in Berlin in August 2025, which was very well received. We are now offering this presentation as a webinar via Zoom for anyone who would like to learn more about this topic.
Yours
