As the only real supplier for his spouse and their one-year-old, tattoo artist Nate Stephens wanted to maintain incomes a dwelling after the store the place he works, Marion Street Tattoo, was shut down. He determined to design and promote T-shirts. However that plan quickly turned greater than a approach to earn a living.
“Because the pandemic progressed,” Stephens recollects, “it turned clearer and clearer that my household was protected and brought care of whereas loads of households world wide had been being pressured into harmful conditions every day. They did not have a alternative and we did, so I needed to assist the easiest way I knew how.”
He determined to donate among the proceeds from his shirt gross sales to organizations on the entrance of the struggle towards COVID-19.
“I made the choice to not solely assist my household, however to assist others as properly,” he explains. “With every shirt design, I made a decision to donate 20 % of general gross sales to native charities. The primary design was the Frontline Warrior design. This shirt has been offered over 500 occasions and raised over $3,000 for the Denver Health Foundation COVID19 Urgent Relief Fund.”
After that sturdy response, he did one other design he calls Keep Vigilant; 20 % of the income from its gross sales will go to the Kids’s Hospital of Colorado Basis.
Whereas the T-shirt enterprise has helped Stephens pay his mortgage and maintain his household fed, it hasn’t introduced in as a lot cash as tattooing. So he’ll be heading again to work at Marion Avenue Tattoo on Saturday, Might 9, when the stay-at-home order is lifted in Denver.
“There will likely be some important modifications to how we do enterprise,” he explains. “It should be a wierd world. I tattoo for a lot of totally different causes, one in all which is having the ability to hand around in one of the vital informal, laid-back, carefree locations I can consider. That is now not the case. We will likely be appointment solely. No walk-ins.
“What’s going to have an effect on me is trying to maintain the store beneath ten individuals at a time, like Mayor Hancock has requested,” Stephens says. “With a view to accomplish this, I have been scheduling one appointment a day. I will be exhibiting up proper earlier than my scheduled time and leaving instantly after. I am attempting to attenuate my publicity as a lot as doable. This additionally signifies that as a substitute of creating the cash I sometimes make by finishing two tattoos a day, I will be making roughly 50 % of that.”
Due to that — and since he is loved serving to organizations and seeing some additional revenue — Stephens plans to proceed to make and promote shirts.
He is already engaged on a brand new design.
“The shirt I am getting ready for the restaurant employees ought to be fairly badass,” he guarantees.
For extra on Stephens’s T-shirts and tattoo work, go to the Nate Stephens Tattoo web site; for details about Marion Street Tattoo, visit the shop’s website.
