SD: What do think is something positive that comes from the piercing industry?
BS: Our trade has matured considerably over the past decades, and has given
plenty of individuals a means of feeling beauty and accomplishment. We can
encourage the benefits of personal self-image and a sense of community
through our work.
SD: What would you like other piercers to know that they might not know
about you?
BS: I’m here to encourage, not to mandate. Equality is my goal, without prejudice.
SD: Being a veteran piercer, what advice do you think that most new piercers
should be aware of as they climb into this industry?
BS: Don’t take anyone’s word for something on authority. Question everything
and come up with evidence to support or refute ideas. Realize that it is difficult,
if not impossible to prove a negative, so focus on what you can do positively
and constructively.
Competence with safety precautions for the worker and client should be
the primary focus for a novice, which covers avoiding infection, injury, and
mistakes of accuracy. Make sure to frequently observe and to be observed by
more experienced persons. Learn from your mistakes, and especially from the
history of mistakes others have made.
SD: Is there anything you wish to learn or get better at in the piercing industry?
BS: Time management for my customers and family, of which a major part is
improving my support staff.
SD: What are you currently doing and where?
BS: Learning and sharing ideas everywhere there is interest, sales operations
from my base in Toulouse, piercing as a guest in Europe and the US, and
working on projects for the APP.
SD: What made you decide to move to France and when?
BS: I moved to Barcelona with my wife when we started to plan a family, and
then to the South of France when the opportunity to be closer to her roots
presented itself. It has been a few years now, and we have two children are
growing up bilingual and open to cultural differences.
SD: I have taught in Europe many times, and I am curious to what you think is
different in the piercing industry there versus the United States.
BS: Apart from conventional differences of the most common instruments and
type of sharps used, it seems relatively harmonious with my experience in the
U.S. and South America. There are some impressively sophisticated studios
and experienced professionals, and in a ddition some that make the extra effort
to carry excellent jewelry, which is often imported. There are not so many European manufacturers that have yet made jewelry to meet the APP minimum
standards for initial piercing.
Like everywhere else I’ve visited, there are also many isolated workers who
don't yet know how to meet safety standards due to fragmentation in the trade
and language barriers, yet are eager to learn. You don’t know what you don’t
know. There are those who don’t feel that standards created in another country
or language should apply to their situation, so I invest my efforts in making
evidence and rationale available for colleagues.
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