2nd Skin

With seven studios between Zürich and Winterthur, 2nd Skin is one of the big names for tattoos and piercing in the region. Anyone who goes under the needle here expects art, hygiene and a welcome of…

• Client: 2nd Skin AG
• Built by: Orbit (Jan, Sebastian, Marcel)
• Period: 2023 bis 2025

With seven studios between Zürich and Winterthur, 2nd Skin is one of the big names for tattoos and piercing in the region. Anyone who goes under the needle here expects art, hygiene and a welcome of the same standard.

Appointments, portfolios and reviews have long been online in the industry, yet the reception desk is still ruled by clipboard and ballpoint pen. In autumn 2023, 2nd Skin AG sets out to change that: consent forms, health details and IDs are to be captured digitally and the same way at every location, legally sound, fast and in keeping with the brand. Every registration is also to become a customer dossier that supports aftercare, rebooking and customer loyalty. The brief calls for a tool that copes with five or more tablets per studio at once on promotion days and is running before Christmas. The commission goes to the three people who go on to found Orbit a year later.

• Digital consent on the tablet • ID and signature without paper • Seven locations, one system • Regulars in one tap • Customer dossier with photos and notes • Automatic aftercare and birthday emails • Export for accounting • Concept, design and development

Away from the clipboard

Reception is a studio's first impression, and until now it consisted of paper and a folder in the back room. The new tool is to feel like 2nd Skin itself: black and gold, calm, generous, made for a tablet in the hand. The prototype is built first in Figma, for both sides of the counter, and refined with the studio team until every customer can fill in their consent form themselves in a few minutes, with an ID photo and a signature on the screen. Development starts in parallel, and what is in the prototype ends up in the finished tool almost line for line.

Trust is a must

Health details are among the most sensitive data a studio collects. Every consent is therefore tied to the person who gave it and to its location, and for minors the studio obtains the parents' confirmation before the needle touches the skin. What looks like a few clicks to customers is, for 2nd Skin, a promise to the people who entrust the studio with their skin: their details are safe, complete and exactly where they belong.

From registrations to regulars

The real value lies behind the counter. Anyone who comes back is recognised with a single tap, and a customer's whole history is gathered in the dossier: photos, questionnaire, notes on sterilisation and on the colours used, session by session. After every appointment the aftercare instructions go out automatically with a voucher for the next visit, and on their birthday the studio sends an offer. Customer loyalty that runs without the team lifting a finger and brings people back to the counter.

From commission to product

Shortly before Christmas 2023 the tool goes live, on schedule. From summer 2024 the newly founded Orbit looks after it under a maintenance contract, brings it to phones and Safari and moves it onto its own servers in Switzerland. Along the way it becomes clear that this is no one-off problem: every studio in the industry struggles with the same paper. In 2025 the tool for 2nd Skin becomes Inkbase, Orbit's platform for tattoo and piercing studios, with licences, locations and a look of its own for every studio.

What we take away

2nd Skin is the first commission in which the solution for a single client grows into the idea for a whole industry. The same question, how to register people at reception quickly, safely and completely, is one Orbit has since answered for Lasergame Schweiz as well. We are grateful to a studio network that had the courage to be the first to put the clipboard down.