Ephemeral tattoos were “made to fade.” Some still haven’t.
NEW YORK>> In May 2021, Claudia Mangione got a tattoo of a match on her rib cage. Ephemeral, the studio that tattooed her, had just opened in Brooklyn, and its draw was a trademarked tattoo ink that was advertised as “made to fade” nine to 15 months after application.
Not so for Mangione, 25. The crisp line drawing “looks like a spatula now,” she said almost 22 months later.
For some customers, the company’s tattoos have proved less ephemeral than they had hoped. Nearly two years after the startup opened its studio to a flurry of articles, including one in The New York Times, some early customers have congregated on Reddit and Tiktok to bemoan tattoos that have lasted beyond 15 months. Several shared their regrets in an article published in The San Francisco Chronicle in November.
From the start, Ephemeral’s waiver included warnings that “the exact amount of time that the tattoo will last may be shorter or longer” than nine to 15 months, and that the tattooing process “might leave individuals with permanent marks.”
But the company’s public-facing descriptions of the tattoos’ fade times have shifted. The website once said the tattoos would be “gone in a year” — despite the caveat in the waivers — but that language no longer exists. As of Friday, the tagline reads: “Real tattoos, made to fade.”
On Feb. 3, Jeff Liu, chief executive of Ephemeral, emailed customers with an update of the company’s explanation of how long the tattoos would last; the email also introduced a “regret nothing guarantee” that offers refunds to customers whose tattoos last longer than three years.
The nine- to 15-month time frame was supplanted in Liu’s email by an expectation that “70 percent of all Ephemerals will disappear in under two years and others longer.” The website also says: “Don’t worry: your Ephemeral will disappear.”
In an interview with the Times on Feb. 10, Liu said describing the tattoos as “gone in a year” was “oversimplifying” and had caused confusion among customers. The nine- to 15-month time frame reflected what the company had expected the majority of customers to experience, he said in an email, adding that the company was continuously testing new language on its website.
Liu said he had learned that “some customers will just take the initial tagline at face value.” Beginning last summer, he said, the company had “started to be more deliberate about how we drive home a message about variability.”
Liu also said that “a vast majority of our customers are very happy with their tattoos and their fade.”
Tattoos are notably unpredictable, said John Swierk, an assistant professor of chemistry at Binghamton University in New York who studies why light causes tattoos to fade. He said factors including genetics, skin type, tattoo placement and light exposure can affect how each body responds to tattoo ink, which has not traditionally been regulated by the Food and Drug Administration.
“I’m not surprised that they would have difficulty in pinpointing how long this is going to last,” Swierk said.
“I took their word for it”
When Ephemeral began tattooing customers in 2021, it introduced itself as a breakthrough for the tattoo industry. It promised at least some of the cool without the commitment, although a number of permanent tattoo artists had their doubts, with one telling the Times that the concept “makes me want to cry.”
The promise of disappearing ink was summed up in the company’s tagline: “Regret nothing.”
The pitch was attractive to investors and customers. Ephemeral said it had raised more than $20 million in a Series A round and has opened six studios across the country, with a seventh expected to open in Washington, D.C., in March. According to the company, more than 10,000 customers have gotten Ephemeral tattoos.
Eden Bekele, 26, a DJ in Brooklyn, got a 2-inch chile pepper tattooed on her right arm after her boyfriend won a free Ephemeral in a raffle. It was a “spur- of-themoment” decision, she said, based on her belief that the tattoo would be gone in 15 months. It is still visible 18 months later.
“Now it feels like something I should have thought about a little bit more,” Bekele said.
The company’s primary innovation was its ink, which was invented by Brennal Pierre and Vandan Shah, chemical engineers who met at New York University. In 2014, they began work developing an ink formulation that breaks down over time. Liu said the ingredients in the ink are all FDA approved and are similar to those used in dissolvable stitches, but he did not specifically disclose them.
Liu declined to say how many people the ink was tested on before it was in use. He said that in six years of development, there had been case studies and “clinical studies” under the supervision of an institutional review board, and that one was being reviewed for publication in a medical journal. The founders — Pierre, Shah and Josh Sakhai — also tested the ink on each other, and on family members and friends.
“The company was founded by chemical engineers, not just a bunch of bozos with an idea,” said Laura Neilson, 41, who regrets the still- visible Ephemeral tattoo she detailed getting in a story for Vogue 22 months ago. “I took their word for it.”