Ohio — Instead of busy tattoo shops, right now, all you see are closed signs and locked doors.
"Man, people are worried," said Billy Hill, Owner of Envy Skin Gallery in Columbus. "They’ve taken away two months of our revenue for the year and this is we just missed out on, because of tax season, is our busiest time of the year."
- Lieutenant Governor Jon Husted announced the stores can reopen May 15
- Many store owners pressed the state for a clear reopening date
- Some owners say the industry missed out on one of its busiest times of year
What You Need To Know
Hill's business opened up not long before the 2008 recession. So he knows a thing or two about tough times for a business.
"A lot of people were getting laid off and people didn’t have a lot of money and we were still a very new company. I was putting in six-day weeks and I had one employee at the time, maybe two. And it was very challenging. But this is absolutely one of a kind. Like, I don’t even know what to say about this. This is crazy."
The reopening is a relief to some owners.
"It’s the extreme stress that goes with that unknowing of when we would be able to work, how long we would be out of work, how long we would be able to sustain not having an income, you know, it was all that kind of combined," said Katie Howard, who owns Revolution Studios in Englewood with her husband Harry.
They posted a letter to their state senator and representative on the company Facebook account. They're still concerned moving forward, since the industry doesn’t have any representation on the governor’s Personal Services Advisory Group.
"It means people are taking standards that we need to do as my industry without knowing what we do. And I think that’s where the misinterpretation, the gray area, came from the very beginning with us not being open," said Howard. "So it is very scary because I feel like we’re going to be represented by people that don’t know what we do in the first place."
Now for many artists, the waiting game is over and the new way of doing business begins.
"When we do get back to work, because of all the extra precautions that we’re going to take, we’re not going to be able to handle the volume at one time. So it’s going to cut our revenue even when we do open back up," said Hill.