Tattoo pioneer rethinking ink with digital flair
Unique, upscale body-art parlour innovates again à la social media
Status quo doesn’t cut it in retail these days. Black Line Studio owner Ion Nicolae, age 40, embraces this ethos.
When he opened his first location in 2006, he was one of the first to offer tattoos, piercings and jewelry in a high-end environment.
Now, with this second location just opened at the Shops at Don Mills, he’s innovating again by embracing digital culture.
Along with four sleek treatment rooms, Nicolae’s 1,800-square-foot digs have a social media treatment space. It’s kitted out with two 360-degree cameras, one of which patrons can tap into via a store tablet, so they can live-stream their latest tattoo for their personal social media channel.
There are also plenty of other spaces for documenting the fun: a plush social media chair and an on-site instant film camera.
Customers can use these digital perks while they get a tattoo (starting at $100) or a piercing (starting at $40).
Since many find themselves waiting around while a partner gets work done, Nicolae has also brought in a laser machine offering the so-called “Hollywood carbon peel” facial ($300).
Also on trend, the location offers energizing intravenous therapies and vitamin injections for those highoctane lifestyles.
On display are original artwork (local artist Joey Dammit is currently showing), jewelry (for piercings and more) and high-end skincare products.
Nicolae grew up in Montreal and then spent time in Florida as a young man, and learned how to do piercing there. “That’s what the cool kids in Florida were doing,” he says. He heard the scene at Wasaga Beach had a Florida-like vibe, so he went there, and opened a little piercing shop on the May long weekend in 2000, when he was just 22.
Right away, customers at his Perfect Image outlet wanted tattoos, too. Nicolae hired someone who knew how to do them, and dashed to Home Depot with his small staff to buy the materials to put together a treatment room.
Over the years, he had the space done over by professionals, and opened more Perfect Image locations in Grand Bend, London, Banff and a second Wasaga outlet.
In 2004, he opened the health-oriented restaurant 350 Fahrenheit — he does Iron Man competitions and saw a need for performance-friendly restaurant food. The following year, tired of commuting between all his ventures, he sold his Perfect Image stores.
But things weren’t yet right. “Running a restaurant is very demanding,” says Nicolae.
Looking at the sector he knew well, he noticed that the city had numerous tattoo parlours, but most of them were a tad seedy, and yet snobby towards newbies at the same time. With more celebrities getting body art, he saw an opportunity to serve a higher-end crowd getting perhaps their first piercing or tattoo.
“There was a gap that needed to be filled,” he says. “There was nobody.”
So he opened Black Line Studio on King St. W. He also sold art by local creators and unique jewelry lines. He attracted celebs, as well as wellheeled locals.
Now, more than a decade later, he was ready to expand and thought this midtown location would better serve his already loyal north Toronto and 905 customers.
“I asked myself what I could do different,” he says, and embracing social media and digital technology seemed the way to go. “I wanted to put us back on the map as a pioneer.”