Running a tattoo business in Malaysia can be lucrative

Choices aplenty: Tom Chong, a tattoo artist, waits to serve the client who wants a speedy tattoo with a ready portfolio which he has steadily built up over the course of 1½ years.

At the V Tattoo Studio on Petaling Street, some 30 artists vie to eternalise their masterpieces on a client’s skin. They have no basic salary, but earn sizeable commissions. Students take home about 25% per job while senior artists like Ngai Chee Ki, 25, can earn as much as 40% of each job.

Ngai, the studio’s manager who has won many accolades in tattoo conventions at the international and local level, reckons that a tattoo artist can earn no less than RM88 an hour on a RM250 tattoo job. Around holidays, an artist’s take-home pay can touch RM300 a day.