The art of the removal: Tattoo regret drives a growing business

Mar 02, 2024

Every tattoo has a story, and so does every tattoo removal: technology has dramatically improved, making removal more accessible and predictable.

Six years ago, Cassandra Reeve fell into a giddy, sweep-you-off-your-feet love affair. Three months in, the couple had a spontaneous, crazy-in-love idea: let’s get matching tattoos.

His name, Bobby, on her ring finger, and her name on his.

The inspiration seized them after a brunch date in Vancouver. They were perfectly sober, but drunk on love.

“We had to call three tattoo shops — they were all asking if we were married, how long we had been dating, were we sure. Nobody wanted to do it,” said Reeve, 29.

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Finally, they found a tattoo artist who didn’t ask any questions. Their names were pricked under each other’s skin with needles.

When the couple split up, Reeve regretted the tattoo, but didn’t get it removed right away. She was hesitant about the removal process, which can be costly.

Now she is in a new relationship with someone who is “tattoo-removal worthy.”

The nursing student describes the process as “very, very painful,” but worth every penny of the $600 she has spent so far.

The tattoo is almost gone.

“I feel so relieved,” said Reeve, who plans to keep her other tattoos, including a sunflower on a thigh.

The global market for tattoo removal, valued at $478 million in 2019, is projected to reach $795 million by 2027, according to data published in Forbes.

Twenty per cent of Canadians have tattoos, and almost 50 per cent of millennials are tatted. Approximately 23 per cent of people regret getting a tattoo and 11 per cent have tried to remove or cover it up.

“There are so many reasons why people have tattoos removed: a lost love, regret, there is drama, tears, joy, pain,” said Billy DeCola, a world-renowned tattoo artist, who is now a removal artist.

DeCola became an international name in the tattoo scene while starring in the reality show, NY Ink. The exposure catapulted him to fame, but after leaving the show to be with his family in Vancouver, he found a new path.

DeCola now finds fulfilment in removing tattoos, helping others reclaim their bodies, and doing what he did: starting afresh.

At the charming studio in Vancouver he runs with his wife, Kaori, lush plants and peppermint-scented air create a calm atmosphere that is markedly different from the gritty, hardcore vibes of the Miami and New York tattoo world DeCola came up in.

Studio Kiku feels like a place to heal past hurts, erase regrets and begin again.

Who wouldn’t want to start over in a brand new skin? Whether it’s because the artwork is outdated, blurred or faded, or life has changed, the demand for tattoo removal has exploded.

The couple welcome a steady stream of clients to have their ink removed — so many, in fact, that removing tattoos has outpaced his business of inking them.

“I have a lot of parents paying for their kids to get tattoos removed,” said DeCola — and those impulsive millennials have provided a steady stream of clients.

Some come to have radiation tattoos removed after cancer treatment. Others want to laser away markers of past relationships, or that awkward permanent makeup — badly painted freckles, lipliner and brows.

One client is seeing DeCola to remove a botched scalp micro-pigmentation job — done elsewhere — that left the client so traumatized he wouldn’t leave his house.

DeCola is treating another client who was badly scarred when she was trying to have a large tattoo that encircled her arm removed by an inept laser technician overseas.

“Not everyone is skilled enough to do this. We’ve seen people get burned, suffer skin damage or be permanently scarred,” said DeCola, who uses a Health Canada-approved device called a PicoWay Laser.

Over the last 10 years, technology has improved dramatically: Lasers that work in “picoseconds” pulse light more rapidly than older machines, work on all skin tones, and have more predictable results.

Although he still tattoos, DeCola describes himself as a “conservative” tattooer when it comes to placement and visibility.

“I say no more than I say yes,” said DeCola. “I always think ahead if it could be something that people regret. If the tattoo is going to alter their life in any way, I send them out the door.”

Life-altering tattoos include art on heads, hands, necks or faces. While it might feel comforting, or even encouraging to know that a tattoo no longer needs to be considered permanent, it’s not easy nor inexpensive to get a tattoo removed.

Tattoo removal requires between six and 10 sessions, spaced six to eight weeks apart with fading beginning after two to three sessions. At Kiku, sessions run about $200 each, depending on the size of the tattoo, the colour and depth of pigment.

DeCola’s PicoWay laser cost $250,000 — a little less than a Rolls-Royce, but far more costly than a tattoo machine that any budding tattoo artist can order online (another thing DeCola doesn’t recommend is letting your friends practise on you when they get that tattoo machine from Amazon).

DeCola didn’t imagine he’d ever be in the removal business, but so many people were coming to him for coverups (a new tattoo designed to cover an old tattoo), which sometimes require an old tattoo to be lightened, that he realized he should be doing it himself.

“Being a tattoo artist, there’s a huge advantage. I know about pigment, about skin — it’s a living, breathing, bleeding organ,” said DeCola.

The machine arrived in January 2020, just before the pandemic. The studio was shut down along with the rest of the city as COVID-19 took hold.

“I wanted to send it back, but they wouldn’t take it,” laughs DeCola.

Now he’s grateful they didn’t take the machine back: Business is booming, and Kiku will soon be opening another clinic in the Langley area.

In the Kiku removal room, Jen Bramley lays her right arm on a table, while laser tech Kalvin Tam applies an ice pack to freeze the area.

Bramley’s tattoo is a remnant of her youth: she got the thick line cherry blossoms, along with two Chinese characters that symbolize “rabbit,” for year of the rabbit, and “Chi” for good energy at 19.

Bramley had offered up her arm to a friend who was learning to tattoo. Bramley dons special sunglasses to protect her eyes during the procedure.

Kalvin positions the PicoWay laser wand over Bramley’s arm. As he slowly moves it, the thick blue lines turn white, almost as if they are being erased.

“They’re not being erased,” explains DeCola. “The white is steam bubbling up under the skin.”

The white colour will subside within minutes and the tattoo’s blue lines will still be visible. The laser uses a short pulse light beam to shatter the ink pigments, breaking them into smaller particles. Over time, the body’s lymphatic system takes care of the microscopic pigment particles by harmlessly absorbing them into the body.

“The demand for removal is so much higher than the demand for tattoos, it just made sense,” said DeCola. “Think of a tattoo artist as someone with a pencil, doing drawings. There are hundreds of them in the Lower Mainland, but only a couple of people have erasers. I’m one of them.”

Kiku client Hailey Merkt got about 20 tiny “impulsive” tattoos she calls her “Pinterest” tattoos a few years ago. She tired of the look after a few years.

“The look just happened to be a bit harder to get rid of than a pair of velvet knee-high boots,” she said. The smaller tattoos were successfully removed after just a few sessions with DeCola.

For Saira Hansen, a 40-year-old education coordinator, the process of getting a tattoo removed was about much more than changing style trends.

She got the ink in 2011, three gigantic lines of faux-Sanskrit script across her ribs, done at the behest of a boyfriend. The relationship ended shortly afterward, but the tattoo remained.

“He pressured me to get that specific tattoo. He would say you have to prove your love to me. The tattoo was an expression of that. I acted from a place of knowing better but I did it anyway, out of fear.”

The words were from a poem he had written that said, “Here we go moving mountains, destiny is reachable, when your hand is in mine.”

The regret sank in right away, said Hansen, who left the relationship shortly afterward.

The tattoo was a constant reminder of a traumatic relationship and time in her life when she wasn’t strong enough to be fully herself.

Hansen has other tattoos. Each was meaningful to her, and each was her choice. This one was different, a true memento of regret.

She has had the tattoo removed gradually, one line at a time at a Vancouver laser studio. The experience has been cathartic. “I have my bodily autonomy back.”

DeCola has seen that kind of joy, and even tears of relief, among the clients that come to him for removal.

“For me, it’s coming full circle,” said DeCola. “At the beginning of my career, I was interested in putting tattoos on. But I never realized how the changes in people’s lives could affect how they feel about their ink. To be able to help with that is a great feeling.”

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