"...The gaudier, the tackier, the more cringeworthy the better..."

If your local tattoo parlor is charging between $75 to $150 per hour, you can too.

I have a confession to make I have a morbid fascination with reality TV shows. Kitchen Nightmares, Tattoo Nightmares, Hell’s Kitchen, Master Chef, America’s Top Model, Face Off, Tattoo Rescue, What Not To Wear, Project Runway, Pawn Stars, The Shark Tank, RuPaul’s Drag Race?  Bring it on. As far as I’m concerned the gaudier, the tackier, the more cringeworthy the better.

While you may question my taste level but despite the carnage that is reality TV programming there are occasional pearls of wisdom. 

I was watching Tattoo Rescue a little while ago. For those of you who are not familiar with the show tattoo shops that are in dire need of help hire an outside consultant and the ensuing struggle to make them solvent again.

One shop had a highly talented staff but they were undercharging for the level of competency they had. When asked why they were $20 an hour lower than a neighboring shop the shop owner said that they were in a middle of a recession. The consultant shot back and said, “The shop down the street isn’t in a middle of a recession?”

It may be debatable what is more technically demanding being an expert tattooist or an expert bicycle mechanic. Tattooists charge, on average between,  $75 to $150 an hour and bike shops on the other hand seem to be fairly spread apart. I’ve seen labor rates (even in 2013) as low as $45 an hour to a rock star like $300 an hour but $125 an hour isn’t unheard of and $75 an hour is pretty common in my area.

Each market is different and there are tools that are available that can help maximize your returns but when you look at the median salary for a bicycle mechanic it’s pretty bad, especially if compared to the average national wage index.


I will say this, however, any shop that is under charging labor is shooting themselves in the foot. If you are afraid driving away price sensitive consumers, especially in competitive markets, I say fine, let them go somewhere else and let some one else deal with the headaches.  Low-end bikes are time sinks and scrambling after pennies is no way to run a sustainable business. Blues legend Robert Johnson said it best, "If you cry by the nickle you die by the dime".

If your local tattoo parlor is charging between $75 to $150 per hour, you can too. That additional money means you can pay back creditors, invest in your infrastructure,  start a 401(k) program, and maybe have some money to send your top wrench to a training center in order to bring them up to speed with modern standards. 

No one wants to exemplify the joke, "How do you make a million dollars in the bike industry? Start with two".