

Today we’d like to introduce you to Corey Sullivan.
Corey, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
My story, professionally speaking, started in college in South Carolina. While in school, I worked in a pretty decent position for a company that I thought was very reckless with people’s careers and financial status (firing them for personal reasons rather than professional).
After one extreme incident, when an employee was fired for helping me and making an innocent (and easily repairable) clerical error, I obviously couldn’t continue to work while they had been dismissed. So, I made the decision to walk away. I was so upset by the ordeal that I made another decision: not to work for anyone else.
I made the steps to begin working for myself, and eventually began a media company. It was rough to start, in the sense that you completely give away a safety net when you give up a guaranteed paycheck. But once I discovered my bills were indeed being paid, that nervousness gave way just enough to push forward and grow with it until it became my full-time gig.
Now, at the same time, and seemingly unrelated, I also wrestled in college. This meant that I was half naked pretty much most of the time. And I was covered in tattoos (I had been getting tattoos since I was 16), so they were on display to everyone. People began to think that because I had them, I must know something about them. It started with people asking me to go and get tattoos with them, then people were asking me to draw tattoos for them. I had always been a little artistic, but it was never something I had put prolonged effort or discipline into. But there I was, drawing up these (awful) tattoos for people.
Soon, and especially around the gym, the question became more and more frequent: “Can’t you just do a tattoo for me yourself?” Pretty soon the answer became, “I don’t see why I couldn’t.” I bought a really shitty, cheap kit off a tattoo artist a couple cities over. When we got back home, my teammate, roommate, and good (naively trusting) friend Bill pulled his pants down and climbed up on my kitchen table. I spent about 5 hours doing what should have been a 30-minute tattoo on his butt. I couldn’t get the stencil to stay, I didn’t know what needles to use or really how to use them, and quickly discovered I, in fact, knew nothing about tattooing. But the end result was decent enough for the time, and so there I was… a tattooer.
This continued with maybe one (horrible) tattoo a month, usually guys on the team or from around the gym, as mostly a hobby and favor for the next year or so. I loved the work, mostly because it was so challenging, and I finally wised up and decided that if I was going to do this, I needed to be doing it the right way. This meant apprenticing. So, I through together a portfolio and went to the local shop. (The only shop within roughly a 30-40 mile radius at the time I believe.) I was offered an apprenticeship, which I paid money for, and it lasted about a month before I was working on customers. Long story short of that is when the artist I was “under” quit on bad terms, it left me in an awkward limbo, and being busy with school, wrestling, and the media company, I put tattooing on the back burner.
About a year later, after I had graduated, I kept really missing tattooing. The media was doing well enough, so it wasn’t a money issue. I just really missed learning and missed the challenge of it. A lot of things come easy, and tattooing isn’t one of them. And tattooing doesn’t care about your mood, what kind of day you’ve had, or where you are in this learning process; it is in your face and brutally unforgiving on a permanent level, and I’ve always appreciated that level of honesty it has.
So, I went back to the shop, was hired, and began working. The shop was small, and within a couple weeks of starting work, I was the only artist there. I opened and closed usually. Obviously, this is a bad thing for learning how to actually tattoo better, but it did give me a unique insight into running a shop, how I would do it, and that I could be good at it.
Through a string of changes, a few months later my (now) wife and I moved down to Georgia (where I’m from originally) and settled in here. This meant me going to another shop to work. I was really excited about this opportunity as I thought it would be a chance to have other artists around and actually learn. But that was a letdown. The shop was understaffed and terribly mismanaged, leaving me in essentially the same position. Once I left there, I went to another shop nearby. Same story.
I had spent a lot of time researching tattooing, and networking, and knew the difference between a good shop and a bad shop. I knew how nice they could be, and I knew what clients should expect. The problem is, most of the clients aren’t well educated in tattooing and assume, almost like with a doctor’s office, that if there’s a building there and the sign says open, there must be a professional working inside. This isn’t always the case! I was tired of watching people not get treated right, watching people get permanently marred and scarred, and knowing that I was limiting my own growth by being associated with these types of places.
So, I broke a big tattooing taboo… with little to no experience, and without a formal apprenticeship, I decided to open my own studio. At the time, we had been looking for a new location to open a media company. My mindset was this: rather than bounce between studios that were subpar, I would put my own private studio within my media company. At least then I could run it as I saw fit, assure it was beyond clean for customers, and make sure every tattoo was treated with the respect it deserved.
So, Norsk Studios was born. But it wasn’t quite that easy…
Has it been a smooth road?
Getting a tattoo studio opened, especially in the right area, seemed nearly impossible. We were put into one situation in the county where in order for us to be considered for the spot, we had to go through a special use permit hearing. But in order to do that, we were told we needed a lease and needed to make the necessary changes to pass certain inspections. What it boiled down to, is we spent a ton of money getting the location, renovating it, and paying for permits and inspections PRIOR to any hearing, and then a very nice secretary there pulled me to the side and informed me that even after I did all this, once we spent the money to have the hearing, they were going to tell us no anyways.
This was financially draining, very frustrating, and put us back at square one. It was a lot of work to simply include tattooing in our business, but it was something I loved doing.. so we pushed forward. We were able to find a new place with an awesome landlord willing to give us a chance during our waiting period for the hearing, and it was within a new municipality which meant our hearing would be as well.
They, like most municipalities, have tattooing grouped with “nuisance” businesses (liquor stores, pawn shops, etc). It was really tough getting people past this mindset. However, after a couple months, we finally got our shop thanks to the understanding of the wonderful people at the City of Buford. And I believe it’s paid off.
Soon after opening, tattooing pretty much took over our space physically. We went from a large media office to a small office, to no office – now running media as a creative web through computers and several locations off site.
We had a very strict formula we have used in hiring people, and have only brought in the best. It’s working. My work has grown leaps and bounds by surrounding myself with these well-rounded talents, and being in the type of location we provide has allowed their work to flourish and develop as well.
So, what should we be on the lookout for, what’s next in store for you?
We have a couple huge things coming up. Firstly, we’ve always been a hugely charitable company. We contribute to charity monthly and have hosted several benefit events. This coming year, we are working to form our own charity aimed at providing children with art classes, encouraging them to keep with it and exposing them to how it can benefit them in future endeavors that are even not art related. Also, we are currently in the process of opening the next of several more locations. And our artists will continue to travel all over the world (we went to Norway, and several other states this year, next year will be even bigger.)
Let’s explore some of the challenges you’ve faced along the way. What was the most difficult part of your career so far?
The hardest part of my career is also the hardest time of my life. Due to several unforeseen expenses, the cost of the move, etc., when we dove into opening a studio, we had literally no money to our name. We worked our butts off, my wife working nights at the hospital, and me working any and all media jobs and tattooing as much as I could to save up to get started.
When we did get started, we put almost everything we had into that first location. So when we found out it wouldn’t work there, and we discovered how long it was going to take to (hopefully) get the new location approved… we had to sit down and say.. alright, we have a son. We have hardly enough funds to cover expenses and provide for him. If we back out now, we can go back to just working full time and we should be alright. And we’ll get to it sometime later. But we knew that out of all the people who plan to do things later, the majority never do.
So if when we decided to go for it, there were several months where it was all or nothing. We did all the work ourselves. Removed carpet, installed flooring, painted, built walls, thrifted for decor.. anything and everything we could to make it as presentable as it could be. And it worked, but those months of waiting and hoping for permitting were pretty nail biting.
Are there days when you feel like you’ve done everything you wanted to, careerwise – the “I’ve made it” kind of moments?
My wow moment happened at our 1 year anniversary event. The first months after we were opened, we were trying to get in a rhythm with things. (Expenses, ordering, handling variations in customer volume, etc). We tried to throw an event the second month we were open to garner excitement about our business and let the community know we were here. We hired a band, rented out a huge venue, put a ton of time and money into marketing. And the weather shifted the morning of, and it snowed. We had 2 people that weren’t family and friends show up. Everyone was really discouraged, myself included.
We had just felt so successful for making it through permitting, the wait, etc, and had all of our finances tied up in this. For that to happen, we naturally began thinking, “did we make a mistake?”
But the next month was busier, and the next, and the next. And we got in this routine of if we do the right things the right way, and take extreme care in all aspects of our business, this will happen. And we kind of quit worrying and just began working. And during our one-year event, we had no clue what kind of crowd to expect. I pulled into the shop and there was a line of people around the building. When we opened, we were packed instantly. I remember in the middle of tattooing looking up, seeing all the guys who worked for me slammed busy, everyone running around and working any way they could, and all of the clients having a great time. We had over 300 people show up that day and got to a 4-hour wait. That’s when I knew our formula had worked.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.norskstudios.com
- Phone: (678) 745-3463
- Email: corey@norskstudios.com
- Instagram: instagram.com/coreyink
- Facebook: www.facebook.com/norskstudios