MfD: Czechs spending more on ink

Prague, Feb 22 (CTK) - An increasing number of Czechs, including businesspeople, have their skin tattooed, daily Mlada fronta Dnes (MfD) writes yesterday.

Thanks to the clients, some 315 million crowns were spent on tattooing last year alone, MfD writes, referring to the figures from the Association of Professional Tattooers and Piercers (APTP).

On the other hand, interest in piercing is falling among Czechs, MfD writes.

"There are about 450 official tattooers and maybe 100 unofficial ones," APTP head Jiri Sedlacek is quoted as saying.

Sedlacek said the business was growing, although it was also affected by the recession that started in 2008.

The growing popularity of tattooing is fuelled by increasing social tolerance of tattooing, MfD writes.

"There is no longer the stigmatisation and the popularity of tattooing and demand for it is on the rise," Arnost Korinek, from the firm Pirat Machines that manufactures tattooing equipment, told the paper.

Korinek said the number of buyers of his products as well as employees in the business had been rapidly growing in the past five years.

However, the Czech Republic is still far behind foreign countries when it comes to the size of the market, MfD writes.

According to the APTP, there are 19 official tattoo shops in the Czech Republic, employing roughly 500 people.

However, businesspeople, the staff of banks, insurance companies and other fields are increasingly the clients, although a couple of years ago such a decoration of their bodies would have been unthinkable, MfD writes.

"No more rebels, but businesspeople, too, are coming," a tattooer told the paper.

The companies, too, are becoming tolerant of tattooing, MfD writes.

Tomas Kofron, spokesman for Raiffeisenbank, said the bank did not ban tattooing to its staff.

"However, the employee has to adopt his clothes to the tattooing," Kofron said.

On the other hand, piercing is losing popularity, MfD writes.

"Interest in piercing seems to be falling or at least it is past its apex both in its popularity among clients and the total turnover of the commodity," Korinek said.

There is one substantial difference. While tattooing has become a matter of broad groups of the general public, apart from teenagers, interest in piercing is increasingly voiced by some managers of the biggest companies, MfD writes.

However, they do not have visible spots on their bodies pierced. Instead, they prefer intimate parts of their bodies.

"They need not to be seen, as they have it for their own pleasure," MfD quotes a tattooer and piercer as saying.

($1 = 18.845 crowns)