From the front desk to the last bed in the back, clients are met with a chorus of greetings from the staff as they walk through the Gold Soulz Tattoo shop off South Maryland Parkway.
The greeting is one of co-owner and lead piercer Nick Gennarino’s most important business tenets—make everyone feels like family. Gennarino is known in tattoo circles by his artist name, Nick Mastermind.
Gennarino and his business partner, tattoo artist Daniel “Mister Tattoo D” Sandoval, met early in their careers 20 years ago at Diversity Tattoo in Las Vegas.
“That’s home, man,” Sandoval said. “It’s our crew from before where we started. We’ve all been through thick and thin, we’ve all been in bad situations and good situations, and we’re just a family.”
The men remember struggling early in their careers after meeting in 2003, saying they barely slept or ate while working odd hours in the industry. Gennarino didn’t even own a car.
The pair eventually went their separate ways, working at other shops in the city—from Mastermind Tattoo to the Nevada Tattoo Company under Cleen Rock One, winner of the 11th season of tattoo competition show Ink Master.
Sandoval said he was still working at the Nevada Tattoo Company when he got the call from Gennarino pitching the idea for Gold Soulz. Gennarino had already gathered most of the original crew from their days at Diversity Tattoo, and Sandoval was “the only one missing,” in his eyes.
To create the perfect studio, Gennarino specifically curated the design floor-to-ceiling, from the dark walls of New School-style art to the name.
“It’s two different things, like the soul part [is] us being good people having goals, holes [piercings] kind of just made it sound good,” Gennarino said of the inspiration behind Gold Soulz. “[And] Golden Knights and gold, you know, all the stuff that has to do with gold out here. It just kind of fell in place, then we just put it together.”
They debuted the shop on December 1, 2022, during the industry’s slow season. The team tried everything to get clients—basically “giving away” tattoos, Daniel said.
But their luck changed a month later, January 13, the first Friday the 13th of the year. It’s a significant day in the tattooing and piercing industry, because many shops offer discounts and flash tattoos, Gennarino said.
Their Friday the 13th deal attracted nearly 200 people to the budding shop, and the next month, another 100 for the Valentine’s Day specials. Sandoval attributed those two events for the business’s boost in clientele.
Gold Soulz Tattoo now sees roughly 10 people a day for tattoos or piercings, and that’s just appointments, they said. Recently, the pair have seen around 20 walk-in clients a day.
Their business model is simple: Do good work, and let the product speak for itself. Instead of rushing a design, they emphasize the quality of a person’s tattoo or piercing over the quantity of customers who walk through the doors on any given day.
And their work starts at $80, which the pair said is inexpensive for Las Vegas.
“We don’t want to rush people in and out,” Sandoval said. “We have a strong belief that one person will tell 10 people about you, and you don’t want them to talk about us in a bad way.”
Many of their clients come from referrals, but social media—such as Yelp and Instagram—also helps, the pair said. Sandoval’s Instagram account, where he posts his tattoo designs, has almost 9,000 followers.
“[Gold Soulz] is the best thing that has happened to us in a very long time,” Sandoval said. “We strive forward … and now are rising together.”
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