I disagree

This is a Wal Mart world, I don't share your optimistic outlook on any significant change in industry standards as a whole.  We can talk again in a few years and see if the APP can pull its membership rates to double digits. I'm betting what you will see in that time is a further proliferation of the $20 shops tucked in every nook, cranny, beauty salon and head shop in the country.

APP membership = approx. 400+

Of which I AM ONE, and proud of it! And yes, I live where there are $20 hack shops that use crap jewelry, and yes, I lose SOME customers to them. The difference is, I NEVER pass up the opportunity to try and educate a client. And believe it or not, I win most of them over. I have a healthy clientel and i make a decent enough amount of money that Ive stuck with it for over 18 years. What I tell my clients is the TRUTH, that I CAN back up with evidence.

Whenever i feel differently is the day I hang it up.

I don't pierce. I am speaking on observations. Also based on 20 years of involvement. 13 Professionally. My opinions on the 'average' piercing customer is re-affirmed almost every day. Yes I burned out, and yes I grew tired of dumb asses.

I looked at the shop list for APP, I didn't count them all but I don't think there are 400 shops on that list. look like 100?, and I didn't see 400 piercers names.  There is 5  APP shops in 1000 miles diameter of Billings, with the closest being 250 miles away. There are HUNDREDS of shops in that same area. A straight piercing is a straight piercing, so you jack up the required credential-ism and jewelry production standards as an attempt to separate yourself from the working masses. That's fine. Good for you, whatever, but there are thousands of working piercers in the world who are not APP members, and I refuse to believe they are all hacks.

Offering the customer the best is ethical, demanding they purchase the best is pretentious.


Edited by MontanaPiercer - August/26/2012 at 5:58pm

One question? Where is the call for 'minimum standards' coming from? Is it the working masses or the minority. The minority. Your standards are not the world's standard.

Piercing started in primitive cultures, and still happens today using the same methods they have used for millenia. Now the piercing police wants to tell them and every piercer not following their rules, that they are doing it wrong? The best is NOT necessary. The best is a luxury.

You want to talk about facts, how about the fact that hundreds of thousands of piercings are done each year without adhering to your inflated 'standards', the vast majority heal fine. That means for most people that level of 'standards' is just fine, and people have a right to do it that way if they want. Legislating elitism is not cool regardless of how 'noble' you think it is.

The APP forgets that body modders throughout history have got along just fine without them. APP could continue on forever or fall apart tomorrow and the vast majority of this industry, and almost every human on earth, most who have never even heard of the APP, will continue just fine.

ALL piercers, good or bad have a right to work. It is the customer's duty to make sure that work is good enough for them, and if it is, nobody has a right to stop it from happening. All piercers also have a right to determine for themselves how they work, and what materials and equipment they use.

Customers have a right to adhere to their own budgets, who cares if they spent 150.00 on shoes. If they don't want to buy high dollar jewelry, they certainly don't have to.

I will always support that choice, and the right to their journey using whatever methods they wish. using whatever tools and materials they wish.

It's like a religion. You can't just be happy with the people who 'believe' but you have to shove it down everyone else's throat too.

To hell with that.