Web helps tattoo business make good impression

When you have a unique business, it is important to make a good impression. But it is especially important when your business is temporary tattoos, made-to-order.

And when the market for your product is 3,000 miles wide and an inch deep, and the budget is limited, it takes a carefully designed plan to make that impression.

Susan Galbraith, self-proclaimed Renaissance woman, decided that the World Wide Web was probably her best avenue to reach her potential market when she wanted to go national with her temporary-tattoo business, SkinPrints, early this year.

Galbraith, whose other talents include marketing, Web-page design, research, and technical writing, put a gallery of pictures of her temporary tattoos on her Web site (http://netvalue.com/susan/sp.htm). Most of the photos are of tattoos that she keeps in stock, but she makes it clear that her primary business is custom tattoos.

Within two months of putting her business on the Web, SkinPrints qualified as a global business, with orders from around the U.S. and Canada, from Ireland, and from Australia. "In fact, a shop owner in Australia asked if he could become my Australian distributor," Galbraith adds.

She has filled orders for Lucent Technologies, formerly AT&T's Bell Labs, for the American Association of Ophthalmologists, and even for the North Carolina Department of Transportation.

Perhaps the strangest order to come so far was from a man in Northern Ireland who wanted some sort of large cartoon figure that he could wear on his derriere. "I have no idea what he wanted it for, but I suspect it was political," she says.

Web sites for others

Galbraith is putting her experience in developing Web sites to work for others as she carries an almost evangelical message about the promise of the Web for some small businesses. She is working to build several sites designed to help small businesses gain visibility on the Web by tying them together with other businesses with which they have some common link.

"I am putting together a number of sites that involve businesses that are either linked geographically or by the type of business they are in. And where there is an overlap, I want to make sure that businesses are visible in both locations -- either by mirroring the original site on the second site (that involves duplicating the content of the original Web site in a second location on the Web) or by hot-linking to the original site," she explains.

Right now, Galbraith is working on cazenovia.com, a site which will contain information about both the general and the business communities. She also is working on antiquemart.com, finecrafts.com, armorysquare.com, and others. Those sites are not on-line yet but are "under construction."

Obviously, in Cazenovia and in Armory Square, there are businesses selling arts and crafts that could also be classified as dealers in fine crafts or antiques. That is why Galbraith wants to be sure to have links to all the appropriate sites, she explains.

Galbraith believes that Web sites offer a valuable option for small-business marketing because relatively small sites can be created for about the same cost as creating an advertisement for a print publication, and can be hosted on a commercial Web server for as little as $60 per year.

"And the content of a Web site can be changed as often as needed to make sure that the site has accurate and up-to-date information about the business and its products. It's not like the Yellow Pages, where you need to keep information fairly vague because it can't be changed for a year," Galbraith notes.

"The Web allows you to really give some valuable information about your business. It helps customers know what kind of products you carry, what your hours are, special promotions. You can't really do that with a Yellow Pages ad or a print ad," she concludes.

Copyright Central New York Business Journal Nov 11, 1996
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