Greg Ferreira: At the time that I met Rudy, Live By The Sword was a bohemian hangout/recording studio. We discovered a shared love of music that morphed into being in a band together.
Rudy Temiz: As bands go, there isn't always a lot of money. We got into the street art together. That morphed into starting to sell mid markets, so we opened up the tattoo shop in the market and that was kind of our incubator. When we opened the salon and we were looking for an appointment Solution, it was right there and Square just made perfect sense.
Kristina Dimoplon: My salon is the salon I wished that I had growing up. I've been a hairstylist in Williamsburg, Brooklyn for the last 10 years. We open Live By The Sword Salon in 2019. My responsibility is to make people feel as comfortable as possible. We want people to feel like their truest, most authentic selves here.
Bethany Lockhart: My name is Bethany Lockhart. I'm a tattooer with Live By The Sword. At our Soho location, self-expression means everything to me. Tattoos are like an added layer of an accessory that you use to tell your story. Originally, we used pen and paper for everything. It was easy for a number to be written wrong and everything's thrown off. With Square, the clients have the ability to go onto our website or Instagram. I get a text notification and they get a confirmation on their phone, so there's no confusion. Having the Square Appointments app has helped me just being able to focus on the tattooing, exclusively.
Janeese Brooks: What I like about the appointment system is that it allows me to use Square Messages to directly contact my clients. Sometimes I'll use it for aftercare situations. Other times I'll use it for rescheduling. I really like that in our appointments it allows them to see the breakdown of what their appointment cost might be, so when they're coming in, they already know what they're going to be paying for.
Rudy Temiz: Our major milestones were one, opening our second location and then being able to add locations within Square. These were huge milestones for us and they were huge solutions that really helped us grow our business.
Greg Ferreira: I don't think you can ever really grow and make a mark on an industry unless you listen to what the people that are getting things from you are saying, what they need, what they want. There's a new breed of customer out there. There's a whole new world of the way people are doing things and you can't discount that.
