Soft Goods

One of my favorite parts about creating branded, wearable merchandise is that it yields a high ROI. Customers can be found repeatedly wearing a logo around in front of groups of the exact market segment your products are designed for. Below are a variety of different soft goods projects I’ve worked on during my time leading marketing for tattoo supply brands. All of the items shown below are products I came up with, conceptualized, designed myself, and/or coordinated bringing to market; ranging from commissioning illustrators to reaching out to domestic vendors and overseas factories. All of the items below were included in marketing plans in different capacities including pop-up at checkout, given to influencers, shipped to businesses resellers our items, and used as an order threshold perk at conventions and during campaigns.

In early 2018, most of the shirts circulating from brands in the tattoo supply space had only logos on them. The merchandise seemed to be treated more as an afterthought, given out as a freebie but rarely to be seen being worn. I wanted to utilize TATSoul’s giant network of talented artists we had at our fingertips, and create something “worth wearing”. After all, we are catering to artists. A group of people who’s life revolved around creativity. I reached out to illustrator and tattoo artist Thomas Fernandez with details and direction of a kind of illustration I thought could include potentially include our recognizable product and I added the tagline “Good Tools Ain’t Cheap & Cheap Tools Ain’t Good” as a play on the commonly used saying, “good tattoos are not cheap and cheap tattoos are not good”

Wrath Nexus Tubes Project

Envy Needles Project

Designed for the traveling artist.

In 2013 while attending conventions and on the lookout for potential branding opportunities, I realized we needed a bag. TATSoul was attending close to 15 shows a year and more than 40 were being held in the US alone. An apparel brand that was known for featuring artwork done by tattoo artists had recently released a backpack, however, that’s all that it was, a regular, run-of-the-mill, Jansport-style backpack; that with no innovation at all had caught the attention of many artists.

I would work with our industrial designer to create a bag that would be specifically designed for tattooers. It would be outfitted with everything from a removable padded machine case to a separate waterproof compartment for clothing. This product would eventually inspire me to source inexpensive branded gym bags that would hold all convention purchases for artists at no cost.

Below are some miscellaneous apparel projects I have worked on

Cobra Zip Hoodie for Lucky Supply Europe, Cobra Design by Henning Jorgensen

Limited Edition t-shirt & sticker pack, created to increase Envy Illustrative Needle Orders

Lucky Supply USA t-shirt, design by Mike Suarez, layout and prep for shirt by Brandt Elliot

TATSoul headlamp - I saw a lot of artists wearing these at conventions and saw an opportunity for us to create a branded product made for tattooers with light variations and a comfortable band.

Medusa zip-up hoodie designed for AOV threshold promotion throughout all Lucky branches, artwork by Chad Koeplinger

ENSO Needles t-shirt designed for launch. Shirt layout by Darryl Royo, artwork by Stu Pagdin.

Lucky Supply USA t-shirt design. Eagle by Mike Wilson.

If you have ever gotten a tattoo or have even simply watched someone get tattooed, you’ll notice that the artist is constantly having to dip their needles into ink. When returning to the tattoo, the tattooer inevitably has to cross over their pants. A friend and well-known tattoo artist, Jim Sylvia approached me with a product idea for a leg apron. He had noticed most tattoo artists at the time were wearing canvas regular-style aprons that were covered in ink and all sorts of cross-contaminants. Jim worked with myself and the product development team to create a waxed canvas apron that was easy to clean between sessions and only covered the area it needed to. As a marketing initiative, I would continue working with different tattoo artists in collaborating with TATSoul to bring their ideas to life.