“We were independently running as artists in our respective streams before we stumbled upon cARTel. All of us are know each other since school times and running a business together was always a dream game running at the back of our heads. It was not long ago that we united and decided to materialize this idea.
The initial challenge that we faced was to finalize upon a place. We went around to look for many places but they didn’t seem to match our vibe. While we were strolling around, we caught our eyes on a dusted and malfunctioned shop. All of us knew this was it. And we labeled it as our studio. What next?
We called all our friends over to do the place. From cleaning it up to getting the most minimal furniture in place, we were all ready to set our ‘second home’. We were tight on our budget while starting out and hence we wanted to stay frugal. The painting that you see on the wall is also being done by one of our string artist friends. This was almost a straight out of a Bollywood movie scenario for us where 4 friends were getting together to build something. We remember all of us staying up all day and night until we were ready to kickstart.
Since all of us had our base before coming together, we didn’t have to start from scratch to acquire a clientele. The clients poured in naturally. However, its usually said that ‘art’ and ‘business growth’ don’t happen to co- exist. You can either be an amazing entrepreneur or an out of the world artist. Well, this might be true… but we would love being called as artists than entrepreneurs any day! Don’t remember the last time we went on a vacation and took a break for ourselves. You will often find us catching sleep on a couch and working round the clock. We breath ‘art’ and that’s how we like it!
cARTel is a place not just for tattoo and piercing . We also have an open kitchen that believes in vegan and sustainable living. cARTel is a community to support artists. Let’s say if you are a dance artist and you would like to host a show in the studio, we would be more than happy to have you utilise our place and share the costs. Alongside we also customise one of our kind silver jewellery that can later be used for piercings. The designs are very unique and something that we bet you wouldn’t get anywhere else. One of our founding members is a VFX and animation expert. We have guests coming from over the world and staying in our studios and finding their ’ikigai’ as we may say. Anyone that is passionate about their work and wants to go all in, walk into cARTel and we would work a way around to support them.
All of us have always been passionate about our art and we feel there is no greater pleasure than gifting someone a set of wings that would help them fly. And that is what cARTel truly believes in.”