We were lucky to catch up with Savannah & Ivy Sheely / Mazza recently and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Savannah & Ivy, thanks for joining us today. Owning a business isn’t always glamorous and so most business owners we’ve connected with have shared that on tough days they sometimes wonder what it would have been like to have just had a regular job instead of all the responsibility of running a business. Have you ever felt that way?

I would say that yes, I am happy as a business owner. It’s stressful at times and can be unpredictable, but so is life and I appreciate the wiggle room. To be honest I haven’t had a “regular” job since I was 19 and have generally worked in spaces where I was a 1099 contractor who could make my own schedule so it’s what I’m used to at this point.

From 2010-2019 I was a stripper and occasionally I thought I should stop and get a “real job”, but after crunching the numbers it seemed like a net loss to trade 40 hours a week for a fraction of the money I was making as a dancer. I lived in New Orleans at the time and had a very lovely apartment in the French Quarter and worked maybe 20 hours a week (from the reasonable hours of 10pm – 3am) and spent the rest of my time exploring the city and doing things I enjoyed.

The last time I thought it would be nice to have a regular job (and by regular I mean “sit in front of the computer from the comfort of my home” as I have no idea what a ‘regular’ job entails) was over the Covid lockdown. The shop had been closed due to the restrictions and the nature of our work and I was feeling aimless and bored. Got over that real quick, though.

Society at large has convinced many people that the correct path in life is go to college and then get a respectable job. I didn’t do either and my life is pretty great, but YMMV (your mileage may vary).

-Ivy

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

My name is Ivy and Savannah and I own Atelier in Richmond, Virginia. We’re a cosmetic tattooing and “glow-up” studio that provides semi-permanent make-up, lash extensions, tooth gems and other beauty services that help our clients feel good in the skin that they’re in.

For women and other femme-presenting people a lot of emphasis is placed on appearance. This is an inescapable reality of the world we live in. We’re just trying to make a life a little easier for our clients through low maintenance services that deliver a high maintenance look! Honestly we just like making people feel good about themselves.

We’re on our 7th year as a business (whew!) and have been voted the Best Brow Studio in Richmond for a few years now, which is a great honor considering it’s a fairly saturated industry.

A fair amount of our staff are/have been girls that we worked with at “the club”, or former clients of Atelier. It’s a pretty close knit group we have and it makes our days in the studio a lot of fun.

Can you tell us the story behind how you met your business partner?

Savannah and I used to work at the same strip club (shout out Paper Moon) and though we were acquainted, we didn’t really know each other very well. We had both independently come to the conclusion that cosmetic tattooing was somewhat that we were interested in pursuing and a mutual friend said we should meet up and talk about it. We got lunch one day and the rest is history!

How did you put together the initial capital you needed to start your business?

Savannah and I were dancers so we would go work at the club at night and then take the money we made and put it towards what we needed for the business. Luckily dancing is pretty lucrative so it was pretty easy to do, but it was exhausting. We were driving to DC, working for 6 hours, driving back to Richmond at 3 am and then waking up at 8 or 9 to go work on the studio or complete whatever tasks needed to be completed that day.

Contact Info:

• Website: http://www.atelierrichmond.com
• Instagram: @atelier.richmond
• Other: @brow_hunni (Ivy Mazza)
  @bysavannahsheely (Savannah Sheely)

Image Credits

Kenzi Flinchum