If you’ve been to the shop any time in the last three months you know Lighthouse Tattoo has been going through some serious changes. We added some new faces and the shop got a facelift of its own. We like it because it goes to show how much hard work we’ve been putting in and you MUST like it because we’ve gotten pretty busy here! In fact, we may have actually gotten a little too busy for comfort. Everybody’s got problems y’know?

Our realism artist, Will Wood, has gotten so busy his normal 3-month limit on booking has become woefully inadequate. Something had to be done. Will has now changed his schedule to allow for two sessions per day at a rate of $600 apiece. This is a discount from his usual $160 per hour rate, which fits better into our tiered pricing system, taking out the guesswork for his clients. First-timers and clients who wish to book time other than the 5-hour window of the offered session will still be charged at the $160 per hour rate.

This is a little funny: We hired a new shop manager some time ago and she took us to task on certain issues. The first thing she did was work to significantly increase our capacity to do walk-in tattoos, the second was to address people who try to abuse us for our deposit policy. The last thing she did was notice that Will only scheduled one tattoo per day, then left once he was done. He also had a tendency to offer discounts to his loyal customers (which all of them are, Will has a huge repeat clientele). She decided to try scheduling him the same as the other artists and build in the discount, because while many of his clients can sit for more than 5 hours due to Will’s famously light touch, it’s not usually more than a couple of extra hours and that meant Will wasn’t making as much as he could!

Will is old. He could go at any minute. He has five kids, all of which like to eat EVERY DAY. To get the most out of him before he dies, we decided to work the old workhorse a little more.

The results were dramatic. Repeat clients have been rescheduled with shorter wait times between sessions; The shorter sessions are less taxing to the client, who appreciate the loyalty discount; and Will’s calendar has opened up so he can start taking new clients again (because he’s technically doing twice as much work now, but don’t tell HIM that)!

It looks like there’s a new sheriff in town and we like the direction she’s taking things, we hope you do too!