Daily Inspiration: Meet Joshua Trolio

Today we’d like to introduce you to Joshua Trolio.

Hi Joshua, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?
My wife Jessica and I owned a photography business in Youngstown for 17 years. We would photograph weddings, high school seniors and had a few school contracts doing sports, dances and picture day portraits. I used to draw a lot in high school and college and attended the Art Institute of Pittsburgh for graphic design. After finding our calling with photography, I hadn’t really drawn anything in probably 12 years or so. After getting a few tattoos, I had the urge to draw again to prove to myself that it’s something I could actually do if I wanted to. My wife Jessica saw my drawings and immediately showed her frustration with the fact that I had a talent and ability that I had just wasted for years. She urged me to try and get an apprenticeship and give tattooing a shot.

The rest is history. I got an apprenticeship and worked under another artist for 3 years before opening our own shop in Poland. The location is also a bit of family history. My grandfather owned and operated a family business printing and selling T-shirts. Trolio’s T-shirts was located at 35 W. McKinley way in Poland Ohio for about 33 years. My whole family worked there or spent a lot of time there helping out. Once my grandfather Tony Trolio passed away, my aunt Sherry kept it going for a few years. She eventually had knee surgery and decided to retire. They leased the space and once she closed shop and the space became available, I just so happened to be looking for the perfect spot for my new tattoo shop. I did both tattooing and photography for a few years but once we opened the shop, we began to phase out photography and concentrate on our new business and starting a family. It really means a lot to me to keep the family business in that corner of the plaza. Even though we ink skin instead of T-shirts, I get to raise my little girls in the family business just like my grandfather did with my aunts uncles and cousins.

We have grown to 5 tattoo artists in the shop including myself. We have room to expand two more artists. We pride ourselves on giving our clients a great experience in a clean environment and delivering quality one of a kind tattoos. Each of our artists have their own distinct style and specialty. No matter what you are looking for, we can point you in the right direction and match you with the artist best fit for the job. We don’t compete with each other but lift each other up. We often share clients within the shop and recommend each other based on what the client is looking for and who we feel would be the best fit for that specific tattoo idea.

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
So funny enough, we opened our business under the name Marked Society Tattoo because we were marking people. We worked under that name for the first two years in business. After our second year, we received a cease and desist letter from a shop in Georgia called The Marked Society. They trademarked the name and forced us to change ours. We wanted to find a new name that complied with their request but didn’t completely change to something that would confuse our clients and make them think we were gone and a new shop took our place. We landed on Trademarked Society since it was close enough to our old name but different enough to differentiate us from the Georgia shop. We found it more suitable for us anyway as each of our artists has their own “Trademark” style. It’s what makes us who we are.

Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
My name is Josh Trolio and I am a tattoo artist and owner of Trademarked Society Tattoo in Poland Ohio. I specialize in realism and portrait tattoos. I do both color and black & grey. I love doing pop culture portraits like movie and tv characters. But I also have the honor of memorializing loved ones for my clients. I tattoo portraits of their loved ones that they get to have as a constant reminder of how much they mean to them. Portraits of their children, parents, grandparents, pets and more. I always take memorial portraits very seriously. The gravity of the importance of these kind of tattoos is not lost on me. I take special care in making sure every detail is as close to perfect as I can get it. My photography and photo editing background helps me a lot when doing portrait tattoos and my attention to detail makes certain that the tattoo accurately represents the person and their likeness. One of the greatest compliments I receive is when posting the tattoo without naming the person and people in the comments recognize them right away. Not going to lie, I breathe a sigh of relief when that happens haha.

Is there something surprising that you feel even people who know you might not know about?
Well it’s surprising how boring and normal I really am. Most people see someone who is heavily tattooed and form their own judgments on them or assume they lead a sort of alternative lifestyle. I’m literally just a husband and dad. Tattooing is something I love to do and enjoy going to work every day but it’s also how I support my family. When I’m not at the shop, I am usually at home playing with my girls, putting them to bed or building something for them. I am so busy with work and family that I rarely have time to go out or do much else. We do like to go camping together in the summer so we can get out and adventure as a family.

Pricing:

• We charge $200 an hour so it all depends on size, location, detail and color. We can work with your budget by designing something big and elaborate or as small and simple as you’d like.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://trademarkedsociety.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/trademarkedsocietytattoo/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/trademarkedsocietytattoo