Tattoodo’s U.S. Success Story
How this SMB from Denmark in the Tattooing industry made it in the U.S.A
Country Of Origin Denmark
U.S. HQ. New York City, USA
Industry Tattooing
Year Founded 2013
Number Of Employees About 50
Annual revenue $2M (Estimated)
About Tattoodo
Tattoodo is one of the world’s leading destinations for the booming tattoo culture. As the premier destination for the tattoo culture and lifestyle, Tattoodo service a global community of artists, vendors, collectors, and tattoo enthusiasts. Notably, Tattoodo is co-founded by some of the most respected names in the Tattoo Industry. The founders are serial entrepreneurs Mik Thobo-Carlsen and Johan Plenge. This platform covers all aspects of the tattooing culture and even lets users request customized tattoos. The enterprise has some of the most knowledgeable media personalities and VCs as our investors and advisors. Currently, Tattoodo is in Copenhagen, Denmark, and New York City. In the coming years, Tattoodo intends to expand to other locations.
The Expansion to the US Market
Neither of the Danes, Mik Thobo-Carlsen and Johan Plenge is tattoo experts themselves. So, in their plan to expand to the US market, they did the obvious. They got in touch with Ami James of Miami Ink, the most illustrious artist in the business. According to Mik Thobo-Carlsen, the intention to establish the US affiliate office started with a phone call to Ami James of Miami Ink.
Mik confirms that they (with Johan) did not know Ami. However, they just called him and hit it off after some initial back and forth. Ami narrated to them how clients would show up with bad tattoo designs. On the other hand, Ami would feel so bad for the bad tattoo designs since there are skilled tattoo artists out there like Chris Garver. The move to expand Tattoodo to the US came as a desire to bring out the true value in the art.
Remarkably, tattoos have become a 50 billion dollar industry. Over 35% of Americans have at least one tattoo. That makes tattooing the sixth growing retail industry in the US. This is why Tattoodo moved to New York to stay on top of the industry. As at now, Tattoodo is one of the world’s largest tattoo portals with over 15 million visitors per month. Additionally, it has over 11 million Facebook fans and more than two billion content views per month. With these numbers, Tattoodo aims to maximize profit and boost their annual revenue amounts.
The team assisting Tattoodo with the US expansion plan includes tattoo legend Ami James and crowdsourcing pioneers, Threadless. Moreover, other top 100 artists in the world are supporting the move. Most artists around the world acknowledge the artwork done by Tattoodo to give tattoo fanatics the best. In addition, they indicate their anticipation to have Tattoodo expand to more countries across the globe.
Financing the US Expansion
Recently, the Danish tattoo platform Tattoodo received sizable external funding of DKK60 million. This is equal to 8.5 million dollars. Tattoodo intends to drain a huge fraction of these funds into the US expansion plan. The funding comes mainly from existing owners, media, and sports celebrities. That includes former football player Daniel Agger, AOL boss Jimmy Maymann, Aspiro Group CEO Andy Chen, Miami Ink star Ami James, and Hummel-owner Christian Stadil.
The high number of social media followers will positively influence the US expansion. As obviously, every business needs numbers. Among the 40 million Facebook followers, more than half are from the US and may play a huge role in the US expansion plan. It must be noted that Tattoodo had to incur a huge financial loss to acquire such a massive following on social media. Mik confirms that the company recorded losses of about DKK 10.9M ($1.5M) in 2015 to market their platform and gain the followers. The positive thing about the gained followers is that they will become the target market.
Even without the hype around US expansion, Tattoodo is already known to the American market. However, the company will strive to become a one-stop shop for the tattoo industry in the US. The platform allows newbie and skilled tattoo artists to compete with designs. The winner gets 70% of the price of the competition. This will continue with the US expansion plan to enable the business to have a variety of tattoos designs for clients.
As Tattoodo expands to the US market, it will use a lot of money for branding and marketing their business. Mik confirms that Tattoodo has used a lot of funds to increase media presence. Just last year in February, Tattoodo managed to attract an investment of $2.4 million. The funds came from a broad range of private investors and were entirely earmarked for content-creation.
Establishing the Brand in the US
Since the beginning, the Tattoodo startup has seen tremendous growth. Having more than 11 million fans on Facebook and 20 million monthly users demonstrates a great branding impact. Being known by such a number of people around the globe shows the impact a business has on the people’s livelihoods. Even more, it shows the interest people have in whatever products or services that a company is offering.
Tattoodo is ready to expand their presence in the USA with a larger investment. They have already established the New York office with backup from the American tattoo artist Ami James from the television program Miami Ink. Tattoodo has been endorsed by iconic names such as Mike Rubendall and Chris Garver.
Sources
Note: This company is not a client of, or associated in any other way with, Mount Bonnell Advisors, or has been involved in this publication. This content has been produced using the following information sources in the public domain: