JSCIMW: tattooed tees

As a kid vacationing on the Redneck Riviera, I’d go nuts over the airbrushed t-shirts in the local surf-shops. I dreamed of growing up and becoming the guy behind the counter painting Trans Ams, palm trees, sunsets, and Donna loves Bubba all day long.

Those days are over, but maybe it’s time to bring some of those experiences back. Rebellious kids everywhere are whining about the unfair parental rules preventing them from getting that tattoo or body piercing that would surely rocket them up the school popularity charts, or at least inform everyone else their too cool to mess with. So what better than a tattooed t-shirt as the next best thing? And with t-shirt popularity being at an all time high, it’s the perfect collision of trends.

The tattooed t-shirt experience could be much the same as the real thing. You go into a hole-in-the-wall store, peruse the designs pinned to the wall, and have a guy named Gus tailor-ink your design while you wait. He hands over the results, and tells you not to wash it in the next 24 hours to, “keep it from bleeding.”

The business model might work as well. Sell the shop the inks, t-shirts, and the basic designs. You sell Gus the gothic type templates, as he can’t use swoopy cursive with hearts for the dots on the i’s, like his airbrush grampa used to do. Beyond the t-shirts, your brand could supply tattoed wall art and other merchandise. All made from sustainable hemp and soy-based inks, of course.

JSCIMW? (Just so crazy it might work).