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Palais RoyaleNovember 29, 2012

Entry DeadlineOctober 26, 2012

14 • PRINTACTION • SEPTEMBER 2012

VICTORIA GAITSKELL

Nearly one in five adults in the UnitedStates now has a permanent tattoo. Infact, 21 percent of the 2,016 American

adults surveyed in a January 2012 HarrisPoll indicated they currently have at leastone tattoo, up from the 14 percent who re-ported having a tattoo in 2008. The pollalso found that the age groups of peoplemost likely to have a tattoo were: 30 to 39(38 percent), 25 to 29 (30 percent), 40 to49 (27 percent), and 18 to 24 (22 percent).Additionally this year, for the first time, thepoll saw women edge slightly ahead ofmen as being the more likely gender tohave a tattoo.

And contrary to any misimpression youmay have from recurring tabloid storiesabout the efforts of celebrities like MarcAnthony, Johnny Depp, and Angelina Jolieto erase their tattoos with the names oftheir former romantic partners, 80 percentof the tattooed American survey subjectssaid they have never regretted getting a tat-too. They even reported reaping such psy-chological benefits from their tattoos asfeeling sexier (30 percent), feeling more re-bellious (25 percent), feeling stronger, andfeeling more attractive (both 21 percent).

On the other side of the coin, while a full50 percent of survey participants withouttattoos agreed that tattooed people aremore rebellious, some without tattoos alsoviewed tattooed people as being less attrac-tive (45 percent), less sexy (39 percent), lessintelligent (27 percent), less healthy, andless spiritual (both 25 percent).

What do these tattoo statistics have to dowith printing? They demonstrate thatNorth Americans regard permanent tat-toos with growing acceptance alongsidelingering reservations. They also suggestthat between these two polarities lies a largegrey area offering considerable room forgrowth and experiment for a unique man-ufacturing specialty: Printing temporarytattoos. Right now this unconventionalniche seems even more exceptional because

it shows signs of expansion despite the cur-rent tough economy. So recently I spoke toSteve Tooker, President andCEO of Tattoo Manufacturingin Tucson, Arizona, a companythat identifies itself on its Web-site as “The World’s LargestManufacturer of TemporaryTattoos for Over 20 Years,” tolearn the ropes of this fun anduncommon segment of thebusiness.

According to Tooker, TattooManufacturing began in 1989as a promotional productsmanufacturer. It added temporary tattoosto its product line in the early 1990s. “As thebusiness gained scale, the owners, a father-daughter team, decided to purchase a com-mercial printing company out ofbankruptcy in the late ‘90s. That was whentemporary tattoos started to gain tractionand eventually became the core focus,” re-counts Tooker, who was hired in 2007 torun the operation. A year later, when theowners decided to sell the company, Tookerbought it along with several financial part-ners.

“At first, the temporary tattoos were pri-marily related to promotional products,” herecounts. “The impetus came from thedaughter, who liked the beach and spent alot of time on the West Coast. She observedthat a growing number of people had realtattoos and saw the potential for temporarytattoos to be commercially successful. [TheJanuary Harris Poll confirmed that tattoosseem to be most prevalent in the West,where 26 percent of Americans reportedhaving at least one, compared to 21 percenteach in the East and Midwest, and 18 per-cent in the South.] Her idea was prettyclever, that a tattoo could be a walking bill-board for a product, a company, or anevent.”

“Today we manufacture about 7-mil-lion temporary tattoos in Tucson, every

day,” says Tooker, whose cur-rent staff numbers just over100. “We ship them all overthe world to over 50,000 cor-porate clients in about 40countries – not only cus-tomers who use the product

for promotional purposes, but almost everylarge outlet that sells the product at retail inCanada, the U.S., and overseas. For exam-ple, Walmart, Toys ‘R’ Us, Dollarama, andWalgreens are all customers of ours.” Hiscompany’s Website also lists Kellogg’s, Kraft,GEICO, and Pepsi among their 65,000 cor-porate partners. “We also have a good-sizedbusiness supplying products and people tofill vending machines that are usually lo-cated in retail outlets. About 40,000 ma-chines carry our products in the U.S.”

Generally speaking, they produce tem-porary tattoos in three languages: Spanishfor the large Spanish-speaking populationin the U.S., French for Canadian francoph-ones, and English for markets around theworld. They adapt to other language re-quirements as needed.

Tooker says large foreign markets fortemporary tattoos include South Africa andAustralia, perhaps because of the largeamounts of sunshine these countries re-ceive, as well as Russia and Norway. He saysalthough temporary tattoos have becomepopular in India, the vogue for both real andtemporary tattoos has not really caught onin the rest of Asia. Perhaps one reason forthis distinction is that India, along withNorth Africa and the Middle East, has alongstanding tradition of decorating thebody with patterns using henna, a tempo-

rary natural dye. In fact, one of Tattoo Man-ufacturing’s temporary-tattoo lines consistsof traditional and updated henna designsthat are FDA-approved for application tothe skin, unlike natural henna.

“In the U.S. our temporary tattoos aretreated like cosmetics, which the FDA[United States Food and Drug Administra-tion or its Canadian equivalent, HealthCanada] requires to be nontoxic and safeas can be; so our products must be fullytested by the same standards as anythingelse that goes on skin and must pass a fairlycomplex approval process,” says Tooker.

Tattoo Manufacturing’s productionprocess is all offset and includes five presses,the largest of which are a manroland 700-series and two Omsca machines.

The company’s substrate is a custom-made water-transfer paper, produced mostlyin Korea or China and a little in the UnitedStates. This substrate enables users to placea temporary tattoo face down on their body,then transfer the ink from the backing paperonto their skin by wetting the back of thesubstrate. The ink is held on the skin by aspecial adhesive, sourced from several dif-ferent large adhesive manufacturers, whichwill not come off in the pool or with soapand water in the shower, but is easily re-moved using ordinary household productswith an oil or alcohol base, such as baby oil,rubbing alcohol, or hand sanitizer. The for-mula for the adhesive varies somewhat de-pending on the type of temporary tattoos;for example, glow-in-the-dark and glittertattoos are both examples of products re-quiring chemical adjustments.

Tooker says tattoo designs are the mainmagic behind his business which employseight graphic artists to develop new artworkconstantly, often based on given themes.“We tend to resurrect the pirate theme onand off, depending on the timing of moviesequels to Pirates of the Caribbean. We alsohold some nice licences to print products forcorporations like Disney, Marvel Comics,which is now also part of Disney, and HelloKitty. The licensed designs tend to be verypopular. The other work we do is custom,using our clients’ artwork or designing vir-tually anything they want. There are veryfew concepts we can’t deliver on with reallycool-looking tattoos.”

Every licensor provides a style guide Tat-too Manufacturing must follow. “Somedon’t depart from the guide at all, but oth-ers will allow us to suggest and implementimprovements; for example, if a package

Continued on page 28

The prospering world of temporary tattoos

Tattoo Manufacturing produces upwards of 7-million temporary tattoos every day within its Tuscan plant, from where product is shipped all over the world to over 50,000 corporate clients in about 40 countries.

Steve Tooker (left), President and CEO of Tattoo Manufacturing in Arizona, describes his company as the world’s largest manufacturer of temporary tattoos for over 20 years.

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TRADE PRINTING

doesn’t look quite right, we might recom-mend a colour variation or a change in sizeor positioning. We will ask for latitude tomake it look better,” Tooker explains.

He and his staff employ a variety ofmeans to research new themes and trendsin tattooing: combing the Internet, keep-ing a close watch on the movies andcelebrities, attending real-tattoo showsand Comic-Con International in SanDiego – the largest annual convention ofits kind in the Americas, showcasing agrowing roster of popular arts includingcomic books, film, television, animation,science fiction, fantasy, and video games.“Then we’ll create some new designs ofour own and try to start a trend,” Tookerexplains. “Our vending-machine businesshelps us test-market new products. We cantake a new idea and get it into vendingmachines in a matter of days to find out ifwe’re onto something or not.” One of thecompany’s newer successful lines, calledSkin Couture, consists of pretty, feminine,realistic-looking body art, designed for anolder demographic of females wanting todress up their look for weddings, partiesand big nights out.

Since sports is another major theme fortemporary tattoos, 2012 has been a signalyear for Tattoo Manufacturing. In soccer,the hugely popular Euro 2012 tournamentof European football associations, hostedby Poland and Ukraine in June and July,set record attendance figures and escalatedbusiness from one of Tooker’s largest cus-tomers: Bear League, a Danish companyholding licenses with nine of Europe’s topfootball clubs (Arsenal, Barcelona,Chelsea, Inter, Juventus, Liverpool, Man-chester United, Milan and Real Madrid).When we spoke in early July, Tooker wasstill busy pumping out temporary tattoosof national flags for the London 2012Summer Olympics that began on July 27and temporary tattoos promoting candi-dates in the upcoming U.S. presidentialelection on November 6, in which Demo-cratic President Barack Obama will runfor a second and final term against Repub-lican challenger, former MassachusettsGovernor Mitt Romney.

Besides temporary tattoos, the com-pany’s other products include stickers,

pocket calendars, and colouring books andposters with a printed-on palette of FDA-compliant, non-toxic vegetable-dye water-colours that work with a paint brush andplain water.

“We try to make our stickers stand outby adding special effects, like using a UVprocess to make them look so shiny they’realmost radiant, instead of flat,” addsTooker. He says although nowadays stickermanufacturers are more commonly lo-cated in Asia, they are relatively rare inNorth America, but a number of othersfactors besides special effects help keep hisbusiness viable: “Since we’re a U.S. manu-facturer, our turnaround is much shorterthan the turnaround of companies inChina. Another of our selling points isproduct quality, plus the issue of safetyand non-toxic materials is a huge hurdlein Asia. When it comes to children’s skin,most people just don’t want to takechances. Over the last couple of yearswe’ve seen a lot of large, publicly held U.S.companies switch their orders from for-eign to domestic suppliers because theydon’t want to take the risk of importingsomething bad.”

Right now, despite the fact that the U.S.print market has struggled for the last twoyears, Tooker says his biggest challenge iskeeping up with demand. “We’re very, verybusy. What we’ve been doing is pickingareas where we can integrate vertically andmake ourselves more efficient, faster, andmore creative in what we do.”

For a fall product launch for a large toymanufacturer, they produced over 50-mil-lion temporary tattoos and shipped themto Hong Kong for packaging, before thepackages were shipped back to U.S. retailersfor sale. From start to finish, the huge jobtook around 60 days. Tooker says the hard-est part about executing it was still keepingpace with the rest of their normal businessactivities. “That size and scale forced us todo creative things with how the work gotpushed through the factory.”

He is planning a variety of further inno-vations to keep the business at the samesteady rate of growth it has been enjoyingsince 2009. He feels it’s still too soon to an-nounce what they are but promises to keepPrintAction posted.

Victoria Gaitskell is keen to exchange ideaswith readers at victoria@printaction.com

28 • PRINTACTION • SEPTEMBER 2012

GaitskellContinued from page 14

TRADE PRINTING

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