As Americans continue to get vaccinated every day, they're rushing to get back to pre-pandemic activities, from eating out at restaurants to going back to movie theaters.
Many are also rushing out to get a new tattoo.
The pandemic proved nearly fatal for many businesses across different sectors. Anything that brought a worker and a customer into close proximity was especially challenging to reopen.
Tattoo shops checked all of those shutdown boxes, and getting a tattoo is one of the most pandemic un-friendly activities out there. The close contact, the collaboration with the artist, and of course the needles going in and out of your skin for hours on end.
The pandemic itself has been unfriendly to the tattoo industry. Lockdowns forced artists to cancel months of appointments and created industry-wide chaos.
Hannah Everhart, a Maryland tattoo artist, is among those professionals rocked by the pandemic. Once the shop she worked in reopened, she was limited in the number of people she could see each week. And since many of the 30,000 tattoo artists in the U.S. are essentially independent contractors and don't own their own shop, they need regular business to get by.
Everhart knew the pandemic would forever change the industry, so she started thinking seriously about opening her own studio.
"A shop was always the long term goal with tattooing," Everhart said. "It's something that I was really thinking for the five-year plan. But during the pandemic, everything was shut down. It gave me time to sit down and evaluate my situation as far as, like, money, and would this be something I could make work?"
It turns out opening her own shop in a year when small businesses faced a major downturn wasn't as hard as she might have expected. She opened Raven and Rose Studios in Savage, Md., in January.
"When I started running the numbers, it kind of made sense," she said. "It was like, oh, I could actually make this work. I could make this happen."
Everhart's move has proven to be an opportune one as the tattoo industry is seeing incredibly high demand. She has seen so much interest that she's booked until October.
(Note: I got to jump the line for my new ink, as you can see above.)
"Everyone's getting tattooed. This is honestly the furthest I've been booked out ever in my eight year career," Everhart said. "I have never been booked out this far so, and a lot of other artists are also experiencing the same thing."
The surge in interest has kept up even as Everhart and other tattoo artists across the industry shifted to digital consultations and appointment-only tattooing.
While she says the increased demand will eventually plateau, some things from the pandemic will stick around. Everhart plans to continue wearing masks while tattooing so she and her customers don't get even a little bit sick.
"I just don't have time to get sick," she said. "People are scheduling appointments three months in advance. And if it gets to be the week of their appointment, and I have to call and reschedule 'cause I have the sniffles, that's not a good look. So, I'm definitely going to keep wearing masks."
Post-pandemic realities aside, Everhart's work isn't stopping any time soon.
"You have people who have been wanting to get tattooed for a really long time. And now they're just like, I'm going to pull the trigger on this. Life is too short. I've survived this pandemic. I can't stay at my house anymore. I need to get out. I want to do this thing," she said.
A lockout is now in place for Major League Baseball. The collective bargaining agreement between the league and players association expired at 11:59 p.m. Wednesday night.
MLB commissioner Rob Manfred said both sides were unable to negotiate a new contract by that time, so the league locked out the players on Thursday at 12:01 a.m. The lockout also means trades and free agency deals have to stop for now. Dodgers Nation lead editor Clint Pasillas joined Cheddar News' Closing Bell to discuss.
The UK-based augmented reality startup, Dent Reality, raised the equivalent of $3.4 million USD in its most recent funding round. Dent Reality has created an AR app for smartphones that helps shoppers navigate retail locations by providing a layout of a store's aisles, while showing where to find specific items. The company works mainly with grocery stores but aims to integrate its tech with all types of physical spaces. Dent Reality CEO Andrew Hart joins Cheddar News' Closing Bell to discuss.
As the electric vehicle sector continues to heat up, one company could be poised to knock Tesla from its top spot. Many analysts have issued buy ratings and raised their price targets for EV-maker Rivian, and say that the company's push into under-developed areas like electric SUVs, pickups, and delivery trucks could give it the right competitive edge to push Tesla from the number one spot. Dan Ives, Managing Director of Equity Research at Wedbush Securities, joins Cheddar News' Closing Bell to discuss Rivian's potential market domination, why their business plan sets them up for success, and more.
Cheddar's Chloe Aiello joined "Closing Bell" to break down the progress of the SAFE Banking Act in Congress as cannabis businesses operators struggle to find financial institutions that will service them. Banks face steep federal penalties, including the risk of losing a bank charter, if found to be servicing marijuana businesses even if their state has legalized operations. Aiello reported that while there was some bipartisan support for the measure in the Senate, the bill faces some opposition from conservatives with "longstanding concerns" about cannabis and progressives who prefer a more comprehensive approach to reform.
Not everything is as it seems in the supermarket. From name brands under different labels, to confusing store layouts, supermarkets employ a variety of tactics to keep you spending. Including selling products with surprising ingredients. This episode of Who Knew? unveils the secrets of our supermarkets.
The world is amidst a skyscraper boom. In 2018, 146 buildings over 650 feet were constructed. That’s more than the total amount of skyscrapers constructed between 1979 and 1999. And all this construction is transforming our cities.
Amazon and online shopping have forever changed how we shop. While I love that I can order almost anything I need with the click of the mouse, this transition from in- person retail is shuttering MUCH of the brick and mortar landscape. But in what’s been deemed the “retail apocalypse” some brick and mortar stores are actually thriving.
From talking animals, to celebrity endorsements, to commercials that pull at your heart strings, agencies are always looking for new ways to connect with you. So it’s no surprise that trends come and go. But what might surprise you is how quickly trends change. In fact, most changes can be pinpointed to a single moment.
Over the decades American pastimes have come and gone. From the soda fountain, to carhop diners, to roller rinks. These former staples of American life have slowly faded into the void. And today, it looks like the time has come for a few other beloved businesses.
The streaming wars could be peaking as platforms vie for a shrinking pool of new subscribers and services like Disney+ recalibrate their outlooks as the rate of new memberships slows. Jana Arbanas, the U.S. telecom, media, and technology sector leader at Deloitte, joined Cheddar to discuss the 2022 outlook for streaming platforms, expecting more than 150 million people to cancel subscriptions adding to the global churn trend. "People are signing up for a service for a very specific piece of original, compelling content, watching that, perhaps, season of content, dropping that service, and then re-upping the service again when the next season comes out," Arbanas noted.
