Alicante Tattoo Convention – Our First Convention in Spain

The weekend after Belfast we were straight back on the road again, this time heading to Alicante Tattoo Convention, run by Spain Tattoo Conventions. The event takes place at IFA, an exhibition centre right next to Alicante airport.

We flew out from Manchester on the Thursday evening, arriving after midnight. Travelling with me were Luan Roots, who had been staying with me the week between conventions doing a guest spot at my studio, and Sam, who was attending his first official convention working with Cool Soothe handling photography and content.

Flying has never really been my favourite thing, so I’ll admit I had a couple of beers beforehand. I know it’s statistically safe, but being sealed inside a metal tube and fired through the air at 500 miles an hour still feels slightly unnatural.

Once we arrived in Alicante we met up with my business partner Michael, who had flown in from Belfast at about 3am on the Friday morning. By the evening he was understandably completely knackered, but he still powered through the first day of the convention.

Luckily, Alicante is somewhere I know really well. We actually have a house about 25 minutes from the convention, which made the whole trip much easier. Being familiar with the area, the roads and how everything works locally made it a comfortable introduction to doing conventions in Spain. It’s also helpful because we’ve got four conventions planned in Spain this year, so it felt like the start of something rather than just a one-off trip.

We were attending the convention as show sponsors with a trade stand, sharing space with Raw Pigments. The plan had been to bring a similar stand setup to the one we used in Belfast, but that didn’t quite go to plan.

Several packages we had shipped ahead of time ended up stuck in customs, which was particularly frustrating because they were sitting at the airport just metres away from the convention centre, but completely unreachable. Because of that, the day we flew out turned into a bit of chaos as we rushed to pack enough product into suitcases to get us through the weekend.

Thankfully we managed to pull together a decent setup once everything was unpacked.

The convention itself felt noticeably busier than Belfast, with a steady flow of people throughout the weekend. The Spanish tattoo scene also felt a bit different to what we’re used to in the UK. One thing that stood out was that people generally had less tattoo coverage, and there were a lot of South American artists working the convention, which makes sense given the shared language and connections across Spanish-speaking countries.

The quality of tattooing was incredible. There was some particularly strong black and grey work being produced over the weekend, which always looks amazing on darker skin tones.

Because the brand is still very new, most artists hadn’t heard of us yet, so Alicante felt like a proper introduction into Europe. Every artist at the convention received a sample, and by the end of the weekend around 80% of them had come back for another, which is always a good sign that people are actually using the product.

There was definitely a bit of a language barrier at times, but luckily Luan lives in Alicante and speaks Spanish, which made things much easier when explaining the products. Unfortunately he slipped away on the Saturday and Sunday for a belated Valentine’s trip, so after that it was mostly Google Translate, hand gestures and confused looks getting us through.

As usual the scent was one of the biggest talking points. A clear favourite over the weekend was Opal Fruits, which seemed to instantly click with people.

There was also some good entertainment around the convention. An absolutely pumping Euro-house DJ, some breakdancers, and some really cool clothing and merch stands, which helped give the whole event a great atmosphere. I even ended up bringing back a hand-painted daruma doll for my wife from one of the stalls.

Another really positive outcome from the weekend was meeting a few potential distributors who were interested in bringing the brand into the Spanish market, which could open up some exciting opportunities.

When you’re doing conventions back-to-back you don’t always get much time to reflect on them properly, but Alicante definitely felt like a good step forward. Belfast had been more of a close-knit artist gathering, whereas Alicante felt like a much bigger opportunity to introduce the brand to a completely new audience.

Between the customs chaos, the travel, and trying to run a stand in another country, it was definitely a busy few days. But the reactions from artists were great, the tattoos were incredible, and it felt like the brand started gaining some real traction.

And if nothing else, next time we’ll make sure our stock doesn’t get stuck a few metres away in customs.