Loss

On Easter Sunday we found out that the wonderfully talented tattooist Jason Saga had passed away. I didn’t know Jason that well myself, but Madge has been seeing Jason for over two years, and proudly wears two beautiful and vibrant Japanese half-sleeves created by him. Your relationship with your tattoo artist is a very special one, as it is essential you build a connection. They were just starting to plan a large Hanya back piece, and I can remember Madge coming back from his appointment and telling me how excited and keen Jason was to start working on it.

Hearing about Jason’s sad and untimely death has left a shadow over our week, and only now has the sense of shock and disbelief begun to lift a little. Our hearts go out to all of the people who knew and loved Jason and everybody who’s life he touched. His legacy lives on with every person that carries his ink.

Stacey

View some of Jason’s amazing work at Saga Tattoo

Cobblers children

So the quote is not original. We’ve all heard the one about the cobbler being too busy working to make new shoes for his children. Well I find internal projects are our version of the poor old shoemaker’s time management issue. We always seem to have a full ‘to-do’ list of marketing materials to create and internal projects to finish. Blogs to write (yes, more than once every 8 weeks), showreels to compile, animations to finish and tailored campaigns to our target sectors are only a few of the things that never seem to get crossed off the list. Every small to medium business owner I speak to suffers from the same problem, and there are plenty of surveys and management training books that seem to back up the feeling that there are not enough hours in the day. The only trouble is, if you don’t keep up to speed with your own marketing activity then new business leads can suffer and before you know it you’re playing catch up. So this month we’ve worked hard. Our Head of Business Development started on 1 March, which has given us a fresh impetus. By the end of the month we will have finished our new CGI showreel, launched a targeted offline and online campaign for the not-for-profit sector, and refocused our sales and marketing activity for the rest of 2008. And we will be posting our blogs more often…watch this space.