Selected work Ink Finder Founder · platform

The operating system a tattoo shop runs on

The platform I founded and now drive. One system for a tattoo shop’s whole operation: booking, deposits, consent, payments, and client messaging. 124,372 appointments run through it since 2015.

The problem

A tattoo shop runs on tools that don’t talk to each other. Requests come in through Google and Instagram, deposits through one app, waivers through another, aftercare through a third. The calendar lives somewhere else, the client list in a spreadsheet, the team chat in a group text. The same appointment gets re-typed three or four times, and no single screen can answer “where are we with this client?”

One system

Ink Finder folds all of it into one. A booking request lands once, and the deposit, the signed consent form, the ID, the message history, and the visit record all attach themselves to it. Booking, calendar, money, consent, and client communication on a single source of truth. Every release is another tool the shop can stop paying for and stop reconciling by hand.

Live today: a booking-request queue, per-appointment messaging with real delivery tracking, automated lifecycle emails, deposits and pay-by-link / QR / tips / refunds (Stripe and Authorize.net), e-signature consent that blocks “Complete” until everyone’s signed, client records, a live calendar with a staff availability finder, and a per-shop forum. Operators get efficiency; clients get one clean line to the shop: book, pay, collaborate on the piece, get tattooed.

An Ink Finder appointment record: parties, pricing and payments, consent and compliance, and project details on one screen — One appointment, one record. The deposit, the signed consent, the message thread, and the project details all attach themselves to it instead of living in five separate tools.

The same Ink Finder appointment on a phone — Same record, from a phone on the floor.

My part

I founded Ink Finder and built the first version with a small team. Over the last four months I’ve taken the lead again and driven it hard: design, full-stack development, the payments and consent systems, the shop relationships. An AI stack carries real weight beside me. The “one system” thesis is the throughline; every recent feature is a brick in it, not a detour.

The proof

It isn’t a demo. 124,372 appointments have run through Ink Finder since 2015. The most recent one ran this morning. It’s in production across all three Hart & Huntington shops (Orlando, Las Vegas, and Nashville), and Orlando runs its whole operation on it, having adopted the new system with zero training because the flow paid off on day one.

The Ink Finder dashboard showing the day's floor schedule, pending appointments, and the walk-in window — The day’s floor at a glance: who’s working, what’s pending, who’s open for a walk-in, and the money moving through it.

Where it’s going

Depth first, then breadth. The near-term work is finishing the consolidation and realizing the original vision: a shop that genuinely runs on one platform. Then growth. I’m actively testing channels to put it in front of the next shops. Three locations and 124,000 appointments is the proof it works. Now it scales.

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