We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Joshua Scott a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Joshua, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today What’s the backstory behind how you came up with the idea for your business?
My youngest daughter was obsessed with flamingos around the age of 2. So everyone got her pink flamingo stuff growing up. That turned into people getting me flamingo stuff. When I was deciding to open a studio coming up with the name was probably the hardest thing. I learned along the way that flamingos are different colors depending on their geographic location and that there are black ones due to a mutation. Every shop is always something aggressive with the name black in front of it. Black Bird, Black Anvil, Black Dagger. I was like, I’m going to name this black flamingo, so it’s aggressive but, not. Ya know? There is already one somewhere in Maryland though so I was going to scrap the idea all together when a former colleague of mine brought up noir, which is black in French obviously. The collective part is because it’s a collective of individuals trying to make tattooing better than we found it. There’s a fairly long back story of how I even got to opening my own studio, but nonetheless, Flamingo Noir Collective was born.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
I got started tattooing at 32 years old. I had worked various factory and construction jobs and at one point at a real estate license in New York State. I would always draw on boxes that I shipped out of this one particular factory. I was dating one of the ladies in the office at the time and she happened to see some of those drawings and ask if I ever thought about tattooing. I had tried it for a brief moment years prior, but never had to means to get a proper apprenticeship. So yes and no was my answer. (Don’t do this though, get a real apprenticeship if you’re going to pursue this path). she had a tattoo that she wanted covered up and I am just so happen to be friends with a few artists on Facebook at the time. So we set up an appointment to get her tattoo covered up. We all had a great time that day, so she told me to reach out to the artist that did her tattoo and see if they would do an apprenticeship and the rest is kind of history. I’ve been in the industry going on 10 years now and I’ve seen a lot of the dues and don’ts. I learned a lot more from the don’ts, I can say that now. With that being said, I set out to create a safe space for everyone to get tattooed, where they don’t feel uncomfortable or silenced in their ideas, there isn’t these grumpy artist acting like it’s a chore to do a simple tattoo. And probably most importantly everyone can feel safe being with any artist in my studio. My partner Aura and I have created one of the most welcoming tattoo environments in the Dayton, Ohio area, or at least we can hope everyone feels this way.
We’d love to hear about how you met your business partner.
She was actually an apprentice at the time in Mansfield Ohio. I had done a guest spot or two up there years before ever meeting her. So when she got into tattooing and was asking around about people, her crew up there always spoke very highly of me. Then I actually bought a painting off of her, which led to us talking more about tattooing and art and I don’t really remember how this worked out, but I ended up going up there and sitting in with her on a tattoo and helped walk her through it because she wanted to get into black and gray realism. We had then started a longer distance relationship where we were both traveling back-and-forth and she had a few opportunities to work with some very high caliber artist here in the Dayton area so she was commuting back-and-forth for a couple months. Then we decided that it was probably best that she come here to Dayton. She just had more caliber artist around this area and was able to network a lot more. As I said earlier, I’ve been in this craft a while now and I’ve learned a lot of the don’ts. Fast-forward two years or so we ended up being put in a position to go work at other shops separately (I was on the verge of just quitting tattooing) or create the amazing space that we have now. We just celebrated our first full year open in June 2024.
What’s been the most effective strategy for growing your clientele?
Just be your authentic self, no gimmicks, no snake oil salesman stuff, no trickery, just genuinely be yourself and your people will find you. Word of mouth has served me well over the last decade, now I’m a little older so I’m losing touch with social media and all those things but when people do meet me they’re at least meeting the genuine me. And their people tell their people “go see this guy” haha.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://Flamingonoircollective.com
- Instagram: Midwestxjosh
- Facebook: https://Facebook.com/fncjosh
