Tattoo booking simplified

Mylon Blueford, ’15, and Terrence Fullum, ’15, have been tattooed over 60 times by more than 20 artists. “Each time, we’re reminded how much the current process for acquiring a tattoo sucks,” Blueford said. “It’s incredibly inefficient, taking days, weeks, or never even reaching completion at all.”

Blueford and Fullum, college roommates and football teammates, came up with a solution during their senior year.

“It was a typical night of us just hanging out,” Blueford said. “We were talking about tattoos, and Terrence said something along the lines of, ‘Yo, what if there was an app for tattoos? An app where you can connect with a tattoo artist, draw up a design of what you want in the app, pay for the appointment, all of it?’ And I thought to myself, ‘You know, that’s not a bad idea.’”

Blueford and Fullum developed a detailed business plan, but the concept got put on the backburner until 2019.

“With my background as a software engineer, I spent the next four years building the booking app from the ground up,” Blueford said. “Terrence used his entrepreneur skills to handle things on the business and marketing side, and we officially formed TattMe, LLC, in 2021. On July 14, 2023, we launched TattMe on the App Store.”

TattMe’s goal is to make the process as efficient and painless as possible. “We reduce the amount of time it takes to book a tattoo appointment from days or weeks to minutes,” Blueford said.

“We’re also helping people that look like us to find quality artists who know how to tattoo their skin tone. People of color make up the majority of the tattooed population, but 99% of what you see in tattoo media is white skin. There are also artists claiming certain tattoos can’t be done on darker skin, which isn’t true. It’s time Black and minority tattoo culture got the spotlight, and that’s what we’re here to do.”