From my conversations with Dmitry Zakharov, the owner of RTE Crew, a tattoo parlor and tattooing equipment company, I learned a couple of things. I learned that you can run a business for ten years without signing a single contract. That there are people in this day and age who make deals with handshakes, and that there is a whole industry in which a con is answered with instant and total loss of clientele.




Dmitry inked his first human body in the army. He used a needle and ink to prick out a picture that differed little from the ones he had seen during his youth in the town of Mariinsk, which has two prisons. From that first handmade tattoo machine arose an entire business. For the last decade, the tattoo world has been forced to know and respect Dmitry Zakharov not only as a first-class tattoo artist, but also a maker of professional-level equipment.

Dmitry lived in Mariinsk until the Motherland called him to his duty, but after the army he did not want to live in the town any longer.

‘I thought to myself, what do I have to lose? I saved enough money for a ticket, and then wondered where to go. And the first thing that came to mind was Moscow. I arrived at the Kazan station and walked from my train to Komsomol Square. Great, I said, Moscow. Now I’ll live here.’

‘Did you find tattoo work right away?’

‘Of course not. First I slept on a bench. Then I got a job in construction painting walls, hammering nails and sawing something or another. When I had enough money, I rented a room. I did a tattoo for a friend of mine, and his friend photographed it. Word spread and people started coming to me. By that time, it was the early ‘90s, and the first parlor opened in Moscow. I checked it out, talked with the owner, but nothing came out of it. I forgot all about it, but then I bumped into the guy on the street. ‘Oh, the tattoo artist! I need a professional. Come work for me.’ I came, worked, and everyone liked it. That’s how I ended up in the business.’

Musical Instruments

One day later on, when he already had his own studio, Dmitry was fixing his tattoo gun when he had a realization: ‘They make all of this equipment in Western countries. Why can’t we do it ourselves?’ And so he answered his own question by taking a file, some tools and bolts and building a tattoo gun.

‘I built it and tested it. I let others try it. It worked well enough. I made another one, then another. I supplied my friends. Then I started getting orders. And then I understood: this is a desirable product, one with a lot of demand.’

One of Dmitry’s principles is to never hurry anything. His maxim, ‘those who need me will find me on their own,’ bore fruit. Soon enough, strangers started showing up, offering their wares and services.

‘I live by a rule: your word is your honor. Let’s say a guy says he can fabricate components. I’ll give him one, and tell him to come back in a week with a duplicate. If he disappears, then I know he was just flapping his gums. But if he shows up with it, I’ll order a hundred more.’

‘The components of your tattoo guns are made by craftsmen working from their homes?’

‘Why in their homes? In places like Kaluga, Samara or Tver there are a lot of factories that haven’t operated in a while. And just as many workers who need food on the table. They take to my orders, which are paid in cash, with gusto. I’ve got a guy in each of these towns who organizes things. I’ll order bronze machines from one spot, cast ones from another. We make a wide variety of products, with an extensive price range. A tattoo gun can go from as little as 50 bucks to as much as $1,500, depending on what it’s made of. The components are assembled at my shop in Moscow, though I do the quality control personally.’

‘Do you test them on yourself?’

‘No. It’s the sound. A tattoo gun is like a musical instrument. It has to be in tune. My ears pick that up.’


Russian Jewels

‘Is everything in this business under the table or do you work officially, too?’

‘Everything is legal. One client may come in for a piece on his arm, while another is here to buy a tattoo gun, but both pay at the cash register. It’s the same thing with my foreign orders. My business is very specific, serving a small niche, so everything is based on personal reputation rather than formal agreements. It works — I receive payment before shipping my goods. It comes through Western Union or other transfers, whatever is convenient.’

‘But how do you do business with foreigners? After all, they use contracts and forms in business arrangements.’

‘First of all, I am personally acquainted with most of my foreign clientele as well. Every year there are tattoo conventions and festivals which we attend. We meet each other there, spend time and hang out with each other. That’s exactly how we found our first clients. We were quite the curiosity at first — tattoo artists from Russia, with our handmade guns. I think they thought we had bears in the streets here.’

‘Why do Western artists buy Russian equipment when they have so much of their own?’

‘Because tattoo machines have their own geographical characteristics. Western machines have their own quirks, and Russian ones have their own.’

‘Which are better?’

‘You really can’t put it that way. It’s like comparing diamonds from Yakutsk with ones from California. We can do things cheaply here that would cost them quite a bit. For example, we can make bronze housing with a personal design on it. That would cost a fortune in the West, while here we can afford the materials and labor.’

‘How much does an individual order run?’

‘It can vary wildly. We’ve got orders for $1,500, $2,000, even more. There’s no ceiling to this, and it all depends on the wishes of the client, on the materials he requires and the labor that will be needed.’

 ‘Are the individual orders your main source of income?’

‘No, we only get one or two a month.’

‘What is your turnaround, then?’

‘It depends. Sometimes I’ll only make $500 a month, and then it could be several thousand.’

‘And what does this depend on?’

‘On the season. There are many more sales in the winter, because that’s when the big tattoo conventions happen in the West. Summer is a dead time for us.’

‘So most of your clients are foreign?’

‘We have a stable level of demand in Russia, but it’s small. It’s greater in the West simply because the tattoo culture there is hundreds of times bigger than the Russian one. We are just starting out in Russia. Moscow only has a few hundred tattoo artists.’

‘Do you have any kind of certification for your product?’

‘No. Instead of that, there is a document issued by the Health Department. It says that our equipment does not require certification. Any attempts at licensing would be a way to swindle us out of money.’

‘Is the equipment certified in Western countries?’

‘No, it’s just like here.’

‘But isn’t a tattoo gun like a medical instrument?’

‘Yes, and in that respect our tattoo parlor has a license. I have a medical education and we are regularly inspected. We have autoclaves and ultrasounds for sterilization. Furthermore, the needles and ink which we import come with documents and certificates of safety. But the industry of building the equipment is not regulated in Russia. An artist chooses his equipment based on his needs and those of his clients — he wouldn’t care whether a tattoo gun has a technical passport. It’s not the most civilized market — the only thing really regulated is hygiene, and we take care of that.’