Today we’d like to introduce you to Amber.
Hi Amber, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?
As soon as I was legally allowed to, I got my worker’s permit and got a job working at my favorite restaurant. I was only 15 but I started learning about customer service and the difference between a great experience and a disappointing one.
After I graduated high school, I studied abroad in Japan. My goal was to learn to speak Japanese so I could land a high paying job in Waikīkī. I lived there for just under a year and learned so much about the concept of omotenashi – selfless customer service from the heart. Anticipating the customer’s needs before they ask, treating them like your own family. I experienced this first hand when I took a bite of my fancy birthday dessert without taking a photo. The waitress overheard me and brought me a new cake and told me “you can take a photo of this one!” That moment stuck with me and I hoped to bring this joy to others in my life as well.
Before I left for Japan, I was working at a coffee shop in Waikīkī. When I came back, I met the person they hired to replace me – Toni. Within our first conversation, I heard a voice in my head saying “LOL what if you marry this guy in 5 years?” 5 years later, he proposed to me. Did I mention I always had a strong intuition?
We worked together for 4 years. We saw each other 5 days a week at 4 in the morning. We bonded over our similar work ethics and often had conversations about how to improve the efficiency of everything in our work space. He had also been working since he was legally allowed and also the eldest of his family.
Toni started his tattoo apprenticeship around the time we got married in 2014. It was a brutal time where we rarely saw each other but his hard work paid off and a few years later, he started tattooing professionally in Chinatown on Oʻahu. I was working at Nordstrom at the time and voraciously consuming their service culture. I learned so much about not only selling with compassion but how to run a business. It felt like the american version of omotenashi and I felt super inspired by everything I was learning.
In 2022, Toni got a text from his friend in Portland asking if he wanted to come and work at his shop for a year while he secures a permanent artist team. Toni had been a Navy kid his whole life, so moving and living on the mainland was exciting to him but I have to admit, I was a bit nervous. Eventually, I said let’s do it and we started over in Portland.
During that time, I went to cosmetic tattoo school. I wanted to incorporate creativity and service based work and tattooing is the perfect combination. Toni and I already knew we work well together so we decided to create Plush Tattoo and Intuitive Arts – a place where we could do our creative work but also incorporate everything we would change about the typical tattoo experience. We have been tattoo collectors for longer than we’ve been artists and have witnessed racism, sexism, unwanted advances, discomfort and much more from the tattoo industry and we didn’t want any of it in our shop.
We created Plush to be a safe space for neurodivergent, queer and marginalized communities. We are 100% vegan (yes, tattoos aren’t vegan by default) and do our best to avoid oppression as an ingredient in our work.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
Our biggest struggle has been finding the right location for our art studio. Our first location was a shared space with a family photographer. It was a beautiful location, but the hours weren’t right for our needs and it was constantly blocked by trains (portland things!) so our clients were often late and we had to reschedule our whole day.
We then moved to a bigger space but we shared the space with massage therapists. While it was nice to have access to massages all the time, it was difficult to constantly tell people to be quiet to respect our neighbor’s clients.
Finally, we got the opportunity to move to NW 23rd Ave, an bustling street for shopping and dining. Even though it was perfect, we had to move in between a ton of pre-planned traveling. We were hosting our family during the day and moving boxes all night. We just made it work somehow and now I look back and wonder how we got it all done.
Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
Our biggest strength is making our clients feel seen through our art. Whether it’s gender-affirming eyebrows or a tattoo that perfectly tells their story.
We are both deeply inspired by our Filipino ancestry and we hope to always reflect that in our work. Pre-colonization, tattooing in the Philippines was a sacred and spiritual practice. You would come to your artist and tell your story, then it was up to the artist to design and complete the tattoo. We honor this practice with an intuitively inspired get-what-you-get tattoo experience. We give you a tarot reading and design a tattoo that matches the messages. Even though it’s a get-what-you-get tattoo, we talk a lot about your story and make sure that it’s a tattoo you’ll cherish and love to wear.
If you had to, what characteristic of yours would you give the most credit to?
Compassion is our greatest and most important ingredient to our success. On the surface, it means being and living a vegan lifestyle and not using any products that contain or were tested on animals. So that’s our baseline. And when we operate from the mindset of intersectional anti-oppression, we find that our clients have a better time and have a stronger emotional connection to the art they receive. They feel seen, understood and cared for and they tell their friends. We do many first tattoos because they know that it’s going to be a chill time. We also get a lot of clients coming back to tattooing after a bad experience and years of being afraid to go back to collecting. Many times, these bad experiences stem from racism, sexism, homophobia and many other forms of discrimination. Our vision for Plush is a safe space where marginalized communities, especially people of color, can feel uplifted and empowered by our art and care.
Pricing:
- Budget-transparency: Tell us how much you wanna spend before we start designing
- Shop minimum for customs is $100
- Flash sales happen often, they’re announced on social media so follow us!
- We love to barter services!
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.plushtattoo.me
- Instagram: @plush.pdx
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@PLUSHTATTOO
- Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@plush.pdx
