How to Get Rich With Tattoos, by Artist Don Ed Hardy

They opened 50 Ed Hardy stores in China last year. It all started to go mainstream in the 1980s. People learned of me through word of mouth and would fly in from all over the globe to get tattoos at my shop. It was crazy. I didn’t know it would ever get this big. And certainly this whole brand thing, the Ed Hardy thing, that completely … it’s like The Twilight Zone. It just fell in my lap.

My work caught the eye of this guy, Christian Audigier, who is a genius promoter, total loose cannon, totally wacko guy in Hollywood. He saw it, and he’s like, “Oh man, I want that master license. I can make this thing huge.” I didn’t believe him. I just said, “Yeah, right.” But we knew that he had the clout and the potential, so we formed an LLC and signed on with him.