The Art of business

By Sky Strauss, Staff Writer
Posted 1/22/25

The very first tattoo shop to ever exist in Centralia was Sinful Ink, a small studio owned and operated by Tate Phelen.

Sound familiar?

Perhaps that’s because after only two years in …

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The Art of business

Posted

The very first tattoo shop to ever exist in Centralia was Sinful Ink, a small studio owned and operated by Tate Phelen.

Sound familiar?

Perhaps that’s because after only two years in business, Phelen made the decision to move his shop to Mexico for a bigger storefront, better market and all around improved efficiency within his business.

“I wanted to make sure to stay in a small town community, that’s kind of where we got big, so I didn’t want to jump to Columbia and leave everybody I know in the dust,” says Phelen.

Phelen was in the automotive business for six years, getting his start as soon as he turned 18. Since then, he has worked for Joe Machens Toyota, Jim Butler Chevrolet in Centralia and Columbia Honda in sales and marketing.

“One day I was working 70 hours a week and just decided, ‘I’m done,’” he explains.

Phelen had gained a lot of marketing and sales experience from his first career but knew that wasn’t his passion. He has a slew of hobbies, including 3-D printing, gun collecting, digital animation and art, but how to turn that into a job was still up in the air.

“At some point, I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do and find a different outlet, career-wise,” says Phelen, who had enough money saved up to support himself for about a month.

While he was unemployed, Phelen’s little brother Trenton Cook invited him to tag along for a tattoo appointment. The artist happened to be the same one who did Phelen’s tattoos, and the conversation quickly transitioned from catching up into a job offer.

“I’ve been artistic my whole life,” says Phelen who had expressed his desire to tattoo to his former artist. “He said, ‘You’re not going to believe this, but I just had a seat open up. What are you doing, Monday?’”

If you’re wondering where Phelen did his apprenticeship, it’s sort of a trade secret.

“Traditionally, we won’t talk about where we did our apprenticeships and things like that if we leave our shop because we’re promoting our own work at that point,” he explains. “Sometimes it can do backwards marketing.”

And Phelen has a unique grasp on marketing.

“I have always been an information sponge,” says Phelen. “I have always believed it’s who you know and not what you know, and if you meet enough people, who have the right information, then you’re capable of moving forward with anything you want to get into.”

It was his job in car sales that would get him in front of “business people” who gave him the knowledge he felt he would need to not only pursue a new career, but start his own business.

His time spent tattooing in Centralia, though short-lived, opened a dialogue with his customers, which is how Phelen came to learn that a lot of his small-town customers didn’t want to go all the way to Columbia for a tattoo.

“I wanted to go to a larger area without doing the same thing that every shop has done, which is throw up a flag in the middle of Columbia and hope to God that it works out.”

So he did a market analysis to figure out where his customers were coming from.

“I knew that we had some people coming from Centralia, but we targeted outside our reach and tried to pull from other towns nearby,” explains Phelen.

What he had learned was that almost 75% of his market share was from Mexico and with the goal of connecting to as many towns as possible from one spot in mind, Mexico just made sense.

“There were better buildings this way, larger floor space, a lot more real estate open for commercial property, and the city council was supportive of us coming in,” he remembers.

The community support, real estate and market data could only take his business so far. What sets him apart, he feels, is his understanding of technology.

“I’m very tech-savvy,” says Phelen who uses all high-end technologies such as top of the line tablets and high resolution printers to streamline business.

Because of that, Phelen feels he can get a lot more people in the door without sacrificing any of the tattooing time.

“It gives me a slight edge against other tattoo artists,” he explains.

Actually, the entire tattoo industry is leaning towards the digital world more and more each year. Within the six years he has been tattooing, Phelen has watched the changes happen before his eyes.

“I would hand draw something on a piece of paper, transfer that over onto a stencil sheet that I would hand stencil that exact same drawing on,” he explains. “If you didn’t like it, I would crumple it up and do it over again.”

Instead, the majority of his designs are now done on a tablet using a program called Procreate, where he can pull reference images from the internet or his clients and manipulate them to incorporate his own artistic flair.

The stencils are then printed off in a matter of seconds. In most cases, small tweaks and adjustments can be redone and reprinted just as fast.

“There’s a lot of artistic background it takes to get to this point,” explains Phelen. “Technology can take you as far as you want; you still have to understand the art.”

Since moving to Mexico, Sinful Ink has had over 1200 clients come through in the last nine months.

“It has been a super supportive community, so I am pleasantly surprised, and we don’t plan on going anywhere,”

In a few short months, Sinful Ink tattoo shop will celebrate their first year in Mexico, and Phelen is already looking forward to the next 30.

“It has been a great first year and get ready because next year is going to be even better,” he adds.


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