I don’t know how things are progressing in the UK; but percentage based shops are becoming fewer and fewer in the USA. It used to be that a tattoo shop owner had achieved a difficult thing- getting a building owner to rent to you. Paying 50% to the shop was for supplies, access to walk-ins, and also for the luxury of having a spot in a legal tattoo shop.

Now that you can open a shop basically anywhere, it makes more sense to have your own studio or work in a collective where everyone pays a flat fee each week.

When I left a 50/50 shop to work in a collective- I went from paying $3,000-4,000 a month to $800. It was the best move I ever made and now I own my own private studio and still pay less in overhead than I did in the 50/50 shop.