Empowered by MailChimp: Tattly

A few weeks ago I got a call from my friend Mark at MailChimp in which he asked: “What would you say if we made a commercial on Tattly for Viceland TV?” Needless to say, I nearly fell off my chair. Sure enough, a few weeks later, Vice and their huge crew showed up at Tattly HQ and filmed a day straight. And above is the end product, which you can also see here. How cool is MailChimp? For a small bootstrapped company like Tattly, generous PR gestures like this one are a big deal.

MailChimp was part of Tattly from the very beginning. In fact, when I started the project, almost five years ago, I ran out of money and didn’t have the funds to print the first batch of tattoos. Rusty who helped me at the time had the idea to add a sponsored bonus Tattly in every order. We pitched the idea to MailChimp and they said yes, which allowed us to get production going. Interesting fact: MailChimp knows the pain of being a bootstrapped company. They are still, years later, privately held, which I think you can sense when you pay a bit of attention. They are and have been generously supporting creative projects around the world. (I myself fall into this category also with CreativeMornings. MailChimp was our first global partner) I consider them a “angel investor of the creative world” not just with Tattly but with many other conferences, magazines, experimental-creative-you-name-it-proejcts. Their generous support is making a real difference.

Thank you MailChimp. Tattly (and the rest of the creative world) loves and appreciates you.


In this same series, Vice and MailChimp also made one on FLO+THEO, Jane’s Motorcycles and Heatonist. You can see them all here.