Starr Ellis, 33, is the owner of Nine Moons Piercing, a body piercing and fine jewelry studio in New York City’s SoHo neighborhood. She closed her store on March 13, more than a week before the order from Governor Cuomo closed all nonessential businesses in the state.
We care about our clients a lot. We’re very overly clean, overly friendly, and we just love to make little sparkles. In terms of hygiene, everyone in our studio has various certifications and training programs that we’ve all gone through. We all practice aseptic technique, and we’re all very well versed in PPE (personal protective equipment). So we were already wearing masks, and some of us were wearing goggles.
Unfortunately, not every shop is like mine. A lot of people who have been doing something for a long time start getting very relaxed, or they had bad teachers, or just never thought to really consider the wide spectrum of potential bacteria that you can spread. I know this is a virus, but our main concern is usually bacteria. A lot of people who do this type of work don’t know when they need to change their gloves. They don’t understand the tattoo back spray. They wipe things down in a way that’s not very clean. I see some places when I walked down the street, and they’ve got bongs in the windows, and there’s a small piercing stall back there right next to the dildos, which is definitely where I want to get my nipples pierced. The human body is very resilient and can withstand a lot, but there is a concern there.
We weren’t super concerned about ourselves at first, because we had the idea that we’re young and healthy and all that. Once we realized that the young and healthy ones might actually be the people who are spreading it around more, we also realized that all of our personal protective equipment might not be as helpful if we’re creating a situation that just doesn’t need to happen.
We voluntarily closed on March 13 to try to help in any way we can. A lot of tattoo shops and piercing studios are trying to stay open; they can’t financially afford to close, and I get it. [These businesses would have to close on March 22, per Governor Cuomo’s orders.] Making the decision to close my shop was very, very difficult. I am surrounded by a lot of medical professionals in my husband’s family, and the testimonies of friends I have in Italy and advice from medical professionals made me decide that any money we could make right now isn’t worth the potential spread that we could be causing.
We share a space with Sacred Tattoo, and they are all independent contractors; nobody’s going to tell them they can or can’t work. But I think one of the last tattoo artists taking appointments decided a few days ago to just stop and hold off until further notice. There’s a lot of pressure for businesses to close without knowing if there’s going to be any kind of actual help for this very niche, minute part of society. Tattooing only became legal in New York in 1990; one of the guys I partner with at the studio worked on getting the legislation passed for tattooing. When it all comes down to it and the government is bailing things out, I feel like a lot of politicians don’t even like tattooing and piercing—are they going to want to help us out when this is all over?
As a business owner, it’s extremely difficult, because we have no idea when it will be over. I’m proud of New York, because I saw a lot of my friends voluntarily closing. I’ve seen a lot of GoFundMe accounts and people chipping in for each other. It’s definitely heartwarming, but it’s just so unfortunate, because there are so many people who are unemployed now, displaced—like, who knows?
So, at this moment in time, I am in a complicated situation where I don’t want to fire my employees. Including myself, I have five employees, and we were just about to hire another one, which we’re going to hold off on for now. They are currently getting paid sick leave, and I’m trying to take care of them for as long as I can, to the point where I don’t want to sacrifice my business to do so. If this continues, there will be a point where we may have to figure out the layoff and unemployment situation.
I’m trying hard to avoid that. I applied for all the things I found online to help small businesses, to help female-owned businesses, and did all the applications for those, signed up for updates on the newsletters for those. I haven’t received any information at all, so I don’t really know what’s happening.
For now, I have to try to sell jewelry and online gift cards. The current evaluation of this virus is that it can’t survive without respiratory situations, so mailing things isn’t a concern. But I don’t think people are going to buy things right now; there’s just too much going on. So, for the time being, our clients are constantly messaging us, trying to find out “are you going to be able to do this upcoming appointment?” We’re taking it week by week right now, and I’m hoping we get to the other side of this eventually so we can start saying, “Yes, we can schedule that for you. Yes, we can honor that.”
We also have a great network of most of the piercing studios in New York City. We’re actually very friendly. We share clients. We’re a community already, so multiple studio owners have reached out to me and I to them, all just offering any assistance, if anybody needs anything. We’ve all been super helpful to each other. It really is sweet. Everybody’s in the same boat. All the service industry people, too, even the top people at department stores are going to be in the same boat.
It’s been so wonderful as a female small-business owner in New York City. I’ve been so over-the-moon happy with the way things have been going, and now with this happening, everything’s up in the air. I have no idea if we will be able to continue. How long is it going to take for us to be able to operate again? Because we are so nonessential, I’m really not sure. Until the economy can get back on its feet, I don’t know if people will want to spend money on things that aren’t super important.