Name of your business.
Off the Map
Your name and position.
Gabe Ripley – President
What inspired you to start your business? How did your business get started?
I had always been a computer geek, and as I was getting more tattoos started trading out tattoos for computer work. At first I was pretty bored with websites as I was programming video games at the time, but pictures and words can attract a lot of potential tattoo clients.
Tell us a little bit about your business.
Mixing technology and tattooing is what we are about. We design and power over 150 tattoo websites and mobile apps, have three real world studios (New England, Northwest, and Italy), produce a tattoo convention, community access TV show, webinars, and co produce an art retreat and Worldwide Tattoo Conference.
What is your favorite thing to do in your business?
Opening the minds of artists and clients to broaden their minds to the possibilities of tattooing. Tattooing helps people become better/more complete people. This happens with the clients we tattoo, the artists whose careers we enable, and the support team who build their perfect job. I suppose the short answer is my favorite thing about my job is amplifying the good parts of everyone involved.
If nothing else, what is the one piece of information you want someone to know about your business?
We create inspiring, life changing art, environments, and events that artists and clients value for their lifetime. Because we have so many different endeavors, we actually took “tattoo” our of our mission statement. Off the Map would like to leave a long lasting positive visible mark on our communities.
What is the one piece of business advice you would like to share?
Get lots of advice! No one person has the perfect answer for you but if you listen to a diverse set of winners, you can collect all the pieces to your puzzle. Listening to people in person, to their books, podcasts, blogs… Absorb as much as you can, keep what fits and works.