By Ed Avis
COVID was a devastating blow to most businesses around the world, but for a select few it also created opportunities. Artemix, a new NCA Vendor Member, was one of those select few. The company’s primary business has long been providing temporary tattoo, airbrush and body paint services for high-end parties and other events, but when COVID wiped their calendar clean, the company turned to retailing its unique temporary tattoo products.
“The entertainment industry was the first to be shut down by COVID, and we got hit hard,” remembers Tina Klideris, president and founder of Artemix. “We really had nothing going for two years. And that’s when I made this product line happen.”
Klideris founded her company in 1998 with dreams of creating a cosmetics business. She quickly discovered that offering body-decorating services was a quicker route to success, and that experience helped her create what is now her retail product line. She began developing her products about eight years ago, and bit by bit created the formulas and tools Artemix now offers.
The Artemix retail line is a collection of 25 kits that include three colors of temporary tattoo ink, setting powder, and 25 self-adhesive stencils (five each of five different designs). The bottles of ink contain a brush, so there’s no messy separate application tool required.
The Artemix temporary tattoos have several key advantages over others on the market, Klideris asserts. First, the tattoos look like actual tattoos with a matte finish, not like the shiny kid’s tattoos you get in Cracker Jacks packages. Second, they are instant – users apply the stencil, brush on the ink, apply the setting power, and voila, they have a tattoo! And finally, they last five to seven days, unless the user wants to remove them, which is easily done with rubbing alcohol or baby oil.
Tina Klideris
“That’s the beauty of it, it’s like one-two-three and you have a tattoo,” Klideris says. “This is a professional-grade, cosmetic-grade product and it’s made in the United States. It’s totally mess-free and you can carry it anywhere you want. You can throw it in your bag. And all the products are safe, non-toxic, FDA approved, cruelty-free vegan. We’ve been using them at parties and events for over 20 years and never had a problem.
The 25 kits range from holiday themed – such as Halloween, Valentine’s Day and Christmas – to everyday designs. For Halloween the company is offering two kits this year – Fright Night and Mystic Vibes. The most popular everyday kits are Artemis and In the Zone. (See all the sell sheets below for details.)
“I believe the Artemis kit is the most popular one because the designs include the moon, the stars, the arrows – images related to the Artemis program that is now launching to the moon. People are into those symbols,” Klideris says. “And In the Zone is a fun kit because its designs are about what’s happening now in our world – sneakers, video games, things like that.”
The kits are available in attractive retail tubes that can be placed in a clear plastic bucket-like point of purchase display that holds a dozen tubes. Retailers can swap out the tubes as the seasons change or as they learn customer preferences. Alternately, stores can request the tubes with hooks at the top so they can be displayed on peg boards.
The wholesale cost of the tubes is $5 each, and NCA members receive a 10 percent discount, dropping the price to $4.50 each. The company is offering free shipping and the refillable bucket at no cost, for minimum orders of 24 kits.
Further advantages: Klideris vows that the kits are not being sold on Amazon, and because the products are just now hitting the retail market, the big box stores will not have them in 2023. That means if your store carries these this year, customers will not find them at the Walmart or Target.
The company is asking for Halloween orders to be placed by April 15 to give them time for production. However, the everyday line is available year-round. See a gallery of seven Artemix sell sheets below (click on the little images to make them big), and you can see the product line here: http://www.artemix.com/products To place an order and get the NCA discount, order from Nigel Febland, nigel@thefeblandgroup.com, 212-675-3790.
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