GET INKED, TEMPORARILY
The business behind fake tattoos,
Brothers take tattoo design to a new, less permanent level
Many great business ideas are born from a problem without a solution.
For Tyler Handley, that problem was temporary tattoos — or lack thereof. Not quite ready for his dream tattoo, “I wanted to wear tattoos in the meantime that meant something to me but I didn’t necessarily want them permanently,” says Handley, 28.
Unimpressed with the temporary offerings available — “they were things you used as a kid. They don’t look real, they only last a couple days, they flake away” — Handley began looking for a way to create something more authentic looking, with a longer wear time. He recalled a documentary he had seen about indigenous tribes in south and central America who painted their bodies with ink before battle.
“I thought — what is that stuff?” Handley says.
The answer: jagua gel — and the catalyst for Inkbox, the company behind the world’s first two-week temporary tattoo. Since Handley and younger brother Braden launched Inkbox in February, the Torontobased company has found customers in more than 80 countries, raised more than $275,000 on Kickstarter and attracted press attention from the likes of Buzzfeed, Mashable, the Huffington Post and Glamour magazine.
“It’s a unique product. It’s completely new. Nothing’s happened in the tattoo space for decades,” Tyler says. “Twenty-three per cent of Americans have a tattoo. When people hear the idea, it’s an instant ‘Wow, this is an inevitable product.’ ”
The appeal is obvious. Inkbox tattoos aren’t your ’90s “wet-and-stick” variety; they last for two weeks, they look authentic and the designs are on-trend (palm trees, delicate triangles and words such as “hustle” are amongst the hundreds of offerings).
The Handleys have developed their own unique, all-organic patentpending ink blend that includes jagua fruit (scientific name: Genipa Americana) from Panama. It looks black with a slight hint of dark blue — just like the real thing — but has none of the giveaway sheen of other temporary tattoos and is safe for the skin, with all-natural ingredients.
After applying the tattoo via the adhesive stencil and supplied ink, the image develops over 12 to 24 hours. The ink works by staining the epidermis, which constantly regenerates itself. Real tattoos stain the dermis, the deeper layer of skin. “It’s not on top of your skin. It’s actually a part of your skin for two weeks,” says Braden, 25. “It’s not henna. This sinks into your skin . . . It’s a slow chemical reaction,” Tyler adds.
The rise from idea to a company that has now sold more than 43,000 tattoos was quick. In the summer and fall of 2014, the brothers began experimenting with the ink formulation and creating stencils with adhesive materials and a die-cutter. Braden left his job with a marketing company and Tyler stepped away from his web startup to pursue Inkbox full-time. They enlisted the help of friends to help create the initial designs, built an email list and began showing off the designs on Instagram. They launched on Feb. 2 and generated about $500 in sales on day one. Knowing how to market themselves and generate press has been a huge boon for the brothers. Highly savvy when it comes to online marketing and social media, Tyler and Braden made sure they had a strategy in place.
“We had the website up about a month before we launched,” Tyler says. “We drove traffic through Facebook ads, Instagram and Twitter.” “Even in January, people were ask- ing ‘When can I buy this?’” Braden recalls.
They also used traditional PR measures. After some research, they assembled a press kit and wrote a press release. Then they began emailing journalists.
“We did a lot of research about how to do it, what writers want to see,” Tyler says. “We’re a startup — we’re pretty good at finding people’s email addresses.”
They started with local media, then moved to national and international. The staggered approach paid off. “Buzzfeed picked us up, and then everyone did,” Tyler says. “On the day that the Buzzfeed article went up, we had 100,000 people to our site — in one day,” Braden adds.
All the media attention helped drive traffic to the Inkbox Kickstarter campaign, which the brothers launched in July to help fund the purchase of machinery and lab equipment that will help produce version 2.0 of Inkbox.
The original formula takes up to two hours to dry, requires refrigeration and is prone to errors. The new formula, which the brothers developed with the assistance of a commissioned chemical engineer, takes 10 minutes to apply and can live outside of the fridge.
Inkbox is now working on fulfilling orders for the 18,000 version 2.0 tattoos sold through the Kickstarter campaign, which was more than 1000 per cent funded when it closed. They’re also looking to create more complex tattoos, work with more designers and enable more custom designs.
“We want to replicate the full gamut of tattoo art,” Tyler says. “Any tattoo you’d like, but temporary.”
As for the jagua fruit that’s so crucial to Inkbox, the Handleys are honouring its roots. They donate a percentage of every sale to the Darien Initiative, which provides community and agricultural support to the Embera-Wounaan and Kuna tribes of the Darien Gap, Panama, who handpick the fruit.
“When people hear the idea, it’s an instant ‘Wow, this is an inevitable product.’ ” TYLER HANDLEY INKBOX ENTREPRENEUR