Today we’d like to introduce you to John Johnson.
John, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
I started working in the professional piercing industry in 1998 at Body Accents in Indianapolis. I started as a counter assistant and had no immediate desire to make body piercing a career. At that time, I already had four years of experience working in medical and dental offices. I found their environmental similarities to the piercing studio comfortable and found myself at home. What really made me fall in love with body piercing was the added artistic element. Everyone knows piercing needs to be done safely, but the beauty of piercing requires a different understanding. Eventually I would return to California and work for Kari Barba’s Outer Limits for twelve years, As my career evolved and I grew as a person owning a studio was a natural evolution.
Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
I would never tell anyone starting and maintaining a business is easy. I started by spending a full year doing market research. Until you have solid calculated numbers you never really know how accurate (or not) your assumptions are, Working with a budget was challenging because everything I planned only happened slower and more expensive than anticipated. I think having awareness of your capabilities are crucial. No one can do it all, so I suggest just paying the experts. Someone specializes in everything you need, so if it needs to be done right, pay for it, trust me.
A business requires care and attention like a living being and can never be neglected. That means you never really have a moment free from your obligations and stress. Fortunately, as a member of the Association of Professional Piercers I have a global family of colleagues in every possible aspect of piercing including business owners and jewelers. I was able to draw from their collective experience and advice when planning the studio. Of course, the Long Beach library loaned me more books than I can count. Also, the Long Beach Small Business Development Center has classes and personal business counseling and I took full advantage of everything they offer. After five years I still see business counselors every couple month. I could never adequately describe how helpful they are. Last but not least I have a great business partner. After completing my business plan, I met Dave Casper from Caspian Tattoo in Virginia at the APP’s annual conference in Las Vegas in 2011. Together, we built something we could both love and be proud of.
Opening a business could never be fast or easy, so planning is everything. Louis Pasteur said “Chance favors the prepared mind.” Live by these words and things will be as easy as they can be.
Please tell us about New Flower Studio Body Piercing.
Body piercing has evolved over the last few decades from a fringe service with limited products and small customer base to a thriving industry with incredible jewelry innovations that appeal to a wide range of people. If you care about fashion in any way, you will almost certainly find something you love in a modern piercing studio like New Flower. In the modern era piercing studios function more like jewelry stores where the actual service of piercing is secondary. This means that a piercer doesn’t only need to understand the mechanical aspects of performing a quality piercing, they also need to understand jewelry and fashion. Color theory for example being important. Piercing is a compliment to someone’s existing personal style and we work to give clients piercings and jewelry that appear to fit naturally.
Our mission statement is to offer clients the most unique experience they’ve ever had in a piercing studio. If someone who visits our studio has only experienced piercing and jewelry shopping in tattoo studio, clothing store, or swap meet environments they’ll be surprised. Modern jewelry designers are offering new product lines throughout the year. This means our showroom is always evolving. Our clients love to buy gold and every time they return there’s a lot of new things to discover. Aside from products, we truly work to make everyone feel at home. As busy as we can get, we always try and spend the time to get to know our clients as they visit our studio. We really want them to know we appreciate them and sincerely want them to love their piercings and jewelry. The biggest part of our success is having a staff that understands and works to fulfill our mission statement. Our current staff includes piercer Vanessa Jo who joined us in 2015 and has become one of the most popular piercers in Southern California and our jewelry specialist Caity who manages our showroom. We’re also a popular destination for guest pierces from around the world who want to visit the studio for a short time and work with us. There aren’t many piercing studios in California you can visit and be pierced by the most respected piercers from the U.S. or even other countries like Italy, Brazil, or Germany.
If you had to go back in time and start over, would you have done anything differently?
I worked in downtown Long Beach when I started doing the market research for what would become New Flower Studio. The most obvious change I had to make was to be as far away as possible from that area. The people who would be our clients didn’t shop for anything else downtown so going there was an inconvenience. The limited parking was another barrier that couldn’t be avoided. We fixed both of these issues by opening in a plaza with plenty of parking near our clients who live around Cal State Long Beach.
There are many mistakes someone can make opening a business and fortunately my biggest was underestimating our need for gold jewelry. If we think of high-quality body jewelry as jewelry that meets standards for safety then we include steel, titanium, niobium, glass, and gold. If we’re talking about quality in a purely monetary sense we’re talking about gold. Out of insecurity I filled our displays with lots of jewelry options that could appeal to a range of customers with different price expectations. The reality is New Flower Studio could have opened with almost all gold. Keeping up with demand for gold body jewelry is a constant task.
Pricing:
- Nostril piercings start at $80 with titanium, $120 with gold.
- Ear Cartilage piercings start at $65 with titanium, $105 with gold.
- Nipples start at $160 for the pair with steel.
Contact Info:
- Address: 1180 N. Studebaker Rd., Unit G
Long Beach, CA 90815 - Website: newflowerstudio.com
- Phone: 562-363-5003
- Email: [email protected]
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/newflowerstudio/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/newflowerstudio
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/newflowerstudio
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/new-flower-studio-long-beach
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