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.
The Colgate Women's Games have been running for 47 years with the goal of helping young athletes meet their goals, fund their education, and more. Athletes travel up and down the East coast to attend the games, competing for just minutes at a time, but they continue to return year after year for mentoring opportunities, guidance, and the chance to win a scholarship. Cheryl Toussaint, Olympic Medalist & Director of Colgate Women's Games, joins Closing Bell to discuss this year's event, why this cause is important to both her and Colgate-Palmolive, and more.
The saga surrounding Elon Musk's bid to buy Twitter has made its way to Washington, DC. A group of 18 House Republicans are calling on the social media platform's board to preserve all records and documents related to the company's response to the offer from the Tesla CEO. Caleb Silver, editor in chief of Investopedia, joined Closing Bell to discuss. "This is a long term play, but it's just a shot across the bow by congressional Republicans, who probably will end up taking the House, that they're going to be tough on Big Tech and they're going use Musk's bid for twitter to take it private, so that he can get the platform to be open source and remove its censorship."
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has signed a bill dissolving Walt Disney World’s private government after the entertainment giant criticized a measure that critics have dubbed the “Don’t Say Gay” law.
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The Week's Top Stories is a guided tour through the biggest market stories of the week, from winning stocks to brutal dips to the facts and forecasts generating buzz on Wall Street.
Jonah Goldman, the managing director at Bill Gates-founded Breakthrough Energy, joined Cheddar News to talk about the promising growth in the climate change-conscious investments the organization has made over the years. ”I mean when we're looking at some of the hard to abate technologies and cement and steel and aviation fuel, all of those have promising pathways that weren't there again just a few years ago," he said. "We invest across all of the technology areas that are driving emissions, greenhouse gas emissions and there really are exciting products and technologies coming out in almost every one of those sectors.”
The Golden State Warriors a new affiliate company called Golden State Entertainment to create sports-related original content, documentaries, and musical collaborations. David Kelly, chief business officer, joined Cheddar News to discuss “We think it's a great time to step off into this area. I think the better question maybe is why this hasn’t been formed previously?” he said. "There's a lot of synergies between sports, music, and film, and so we think that the timing is right to bring those worlds together into this venture." He noted that projects aren't limited to Warriors-only content, pointing to the documentary "38 at the Garden," about former New York Knicks player Jeremy Lin.
