My name is Marc Lescarbeau and I own Needlejig Tattoo Supplies. Feel free to hit me up with any questions that you may have regarding my products. Short story is that I am lucky enough to love what I do and have been given the opportunity to share what I have learned from some amazing people with others. If you have too much free time and want to know more then read below.
My history:
I have been tattooing since 1992(illegally in Mass before it was legalized) moved to Arizona to be legit and started tattooing in shops in early 1993. Put off by dope loving shop owners I opened little(300sqft) shop, Body Art Tattoo Studio, in January 1994 not caring if I ever saw another tattooer as long as I lived. Early on I turned down some now well known artists that wanted to work with me because of previous experiences in the business and the shop was just getting started. I finally got too busy to handle it alone and trusted others into my world and in the was forced to move across the road to a much larger building(late 1995) and incorporate the business in 2000. At one point managed to have as many as 12 people on staff before the great tattoo shop explosion. Within that time I also was manufacturing high end body jewelry here in the states until the imports managed to muscle me out in 2004 and there was only room for a couple of the larger companies doing what I did here. That is when I started concentrating on the tattoo supply end full time. I built up the supply company enough to support itself and my family and then sold my shop to Sage(former employee/manager) and Liz O'Connell of Urban Art and moved my family back to Western Massachusetts where my wife and I are from.
Back to the topic of tattooing, in the late 90's I started fussing with the idea of "Round Magnums". Notice that I said "Round" and not curved. Relying on some stories that I had been told, by some of the old timers that I am lucky enough to associate with, I started examining the physics behind the round magnums. After maybe a year and a half of experimentation and studying skin tension and elasticity I started producing the "Round Magnum Jig" that allowed artists to make the round magnums in all the common sizes. Each with a specific geometry based on the number of needles and width of the grouping. It was a hit almost immediately. I took them to conventions and just about any tattooer that I could get to listen to my "Round Magnum Theory" dropped the $25 to get the jig. Then the requests for a liner jig and bar jig followed shortly there after. Then people wanted me to make the needles for them so I started investigating premade needles. Then they wanted tubes and other various items. I am sure that you get the picture and I am still adding items regularly as long as there is enough of a customer demand for them. The term "Curved Magnum" came from the biters that wanted to TRY and copy what I was doing and caught on in the industry because they had way more money than me and marketed them that way. We all know that the mighty marketing dollar usually wins regardless of the products quality and or integrity. Maybe you should ask them why the boxes are marked RM if they are called "Curved Magnums? LOL, I was there first and left my mark literally in the manufacturing end. Only one company was clever enough to use a "C" so what does that tell you about these people paying attention to detail. Most of the biters just picked a random radius and applied it to all needle groupings being ignorant to the science behind the product. I still hear to this day that people do not want to use them because you can not use the corners when the fact is that you still can when they are made properly. In fact the practice of curving the magnums too much creates the exact same problem as a straight magnum but in reverse. It took me 4 factories and tens of thousands of dollars in experimentation to get the needles manufactured exactly to my specifications. I will always do my best to keep the product consistent and available as well as be willing to listen and add new products that have enough demand.
I also have been building machines from the beginning but I do not have a regular "production" line. I design and produce anywhere from 10 to 50 per style machines every year or two and then move on to something else. Keeps it more fun for me until I can manage a full time machinist/assembler team to do a lot of the repetitive stuff for me because I really do not have the time to do it all myself every day. I have at least 4-5 different rotary designs laid out including some that I have never seen anything like but that will have to wait until I get more time to prototype and manufacture. Until then I am a US distributor of Ray Webb's NeoTat and Vivace machines and have a couple of other rotary builders that are wanting me to represent their products also but waiting for some samples to evaluate. Sorry for the long winded history but it really does not even start to go into detail to where I have been, maybe a book some day.
Thanks for having me,
Marc
