Black ink flows for Carson maker of tattoo equipment

Critical Tattoo of Carson City isn't exactly taking the tattoo equipment industry by storm, but the small manufacturing shop on Deer Run Road has definitely made its presence felt in a decidedly niche industry.

Tattoo shops on five continents are inking customers with power supplies and wireless foot pedals designed and built by Critical Tattoo. The company, which employs six people in a 2,000-square-foot shop off Highway 50, was founded by Ken and Sarah Brown. The company sold about 20 power supplies its first year, but the following year, however, Critical Tattoo moved close to 2,000 units.

"That first half-year, it took a minute getting the market to see it, and for magazine ads to start to propagate," Ken Brown says.

The company hasn't had to spend money on advertising in the past three years, however, due to its 96-percent customer referral rate, Vice President Sarah Brown says. Today, roughly 58 percent of the company's business comes from its extensive network of overseas distributors. Critical Tattoo has distributor agreements in Canada, Europe, Chile, Japan, Russia, South Korea and Australia.

Critical Tattoo started as a contract-based custom-machine design firm, but Ken Brown wanted to go in a different direction and had a love for tattoos. He noodled around with making tattooing equipment in his spare time, and after 18 months of research and development and significant personal investment he brought his first product, a power supply, to market in 2007. The power supply is what drives the tattoo artist's needle back and forth. A second product, a wireless foot pedal to control the power supply, followed a few years later.

"I always wanted to manufacture my own proprietary products where I had control over it, and the final say was whether the customer bought it and liked it." Brown says.

The company has had just one lukewarm quarter since 2008 and has doubled its sales volume in the first quarter of 2012 versus the same period a year earlier, says Sarah Brown.

Critical Tattoo builds and assembles nearly every piece of its power supply units, from placing conductors and chips on circuit boards to machining the aluminum housings. A former employee, Ray Weivig, initially did all the electrical engineering work, but longtime employee Chris Bryant now handles those duties.

Sarah Brown says the majority of international sales come from Europe and Australia, but she's set a goal to penetrate more markets in South America for this year. Working with foreign distributors and under the business laws of different countries has provided a sharp learning curve, she says. Still, she prefers working with her international clientele.

"For some reason they are a little bit easier to deal with," she says. "But sometimes I have to stay up late and do a lot of Google Translate to talk to them."

The Browns formerly worked under exclusivity agreements with most of their distributors, but they have since opened up their products to a wider network, especially in the United States.

Domestic sales are expected to increase this year since they went from having one to 10 distributors across the nation.

Critical Tattoo has leased an additional 1,200-square-foot space to grow its business, Ken Brown says, and several new products are in the works. Brown also is looking to move even more manufacturing processes in-house, such as the laser-cut etchings on the covers of its power supply units.

"What makes our business model work is that when we decide to bring on a new process, it is going to be universal, and we will be able to develop products around that process rather than have it very specific to one product," Ken Brown says. "I like to design, create and bring products to fruition."