How to run a tattoo flash day (and a walk-in queue that stays calm)

A good flash day fills the chair, gets new people through the door and clears a sheet of designs you have been meaning to tattoo. A bad one is a crowd in the doorway, a list on the back of an envelope and a client who waited four hours for a design that went to somebody else at lunchtime.

The difference is almost all in the planning.

Pick the day and the sheet

Choose a date with a hook: Friday the 13th, a local event, your anniversary in the studio. Give yourself at least three weeks to announce it.

Then draw for the day. A sheet of twelve to twenty designs is plenty for one artist. Mix quick pieces you can do in under an hour with a few bigger ones, and decide in advance which are one-offs and which you will repeat. One-offs sell faster, but repeatables keep a busy day moving.

Price it simply

Flash day prices should be decided before the day and printed on the sheet. The usual approach is two or three tiers by size rather than a price per design, so nobody has to ask. Round numbers, card payments, and no haggling.

Decide what time each tier takes, including set-up and clean-down. If a small piece is really forty minutes chair to chair, plan for forty-five.

Booked slots, walk-ins, or both?

Booked slots give you certainty: you know how many people are coming and when, and a deposit means they turn up. They suit the bigger designs and clients travelling in.

Walk-ins bring the atmosphere and the people who would never have booked ahead. They suit the small, quick pieces.

Most artists get the best of both by booking a few slots in advance and keeping the rest of the day for walk-ins. Take a deposit on the booked ones, and put the walk-in slots in the gaps.

Announce it properly

• Three weeks out: post the sheet, the date and the hours, and how it works.
• One week out: repost with the designs that have already gone crossed off. Nothing sells a flash day like a sheet that is visibly filling up.
• The day before: say what time you open and how the queue works.
• On the day: post as designs go, so people can see what is left before they travel.

Put one link in your bio that shows the sheet, the days and times, and where you are.

Running the queue on the day

This is where flash days fall apart. People arrive at opening time, the queue is a sheet of paper, and anybody who steps out to get a coffee loses their place or spends the day standing in the doorway.

A calmer way:

1. Let people join from their phone. A name, a number and the design they want. No paper, and nobody has to stand in a line.
2. Tell them how many are ahead. A page they can check tells them when to come back, so the studio does not fill up with people waiting.
3. Message them when they are nearly up. A text when two people are ahead is enough warning to walk back from the café.
4. Call the next person, start, finish. Keep the order fair and visible. If somebody does not come back when called, skip them and move on.
5. Record each sitting as it happens, so you know at the end of the day what you did and what you took.

Afterwards

Post the healed photos a few weeks later and tag the day. Note what sold first, what did not sell at all, and how long each tier really took. That is your plan for the next one.

How Chairtime handles it

A flash day in Chairtime is an event with its own page, its own hours and its own sheet, which you can upload twenty designs at a time. Clients book slots from the event's page with a deposit. On the day you open the walk-in queue: people join from the event page on their phone, see how many are ahead of them, and get a text or an email when two people are ahead. You press Call next, Start and Done from your phone, and every sitting lands on your calendar with the time it really took. Up to fifty people can be in the queue at once. Flash days and the walk-in queue are part of Chairtime Membership.