A Romanian couple who fell in love with Liverpool during a weekend visit have opened their own tattoo and piercing studio in the city. Denisa Mihai and Leon Mercur, originally from Romania, now live in Anfield and run Arcade Tattoo and Piercing in the Commercial District, having moved three years after their first trip.
Weekend visit turns into permanent move
The couple first visited Liverpool three years ago to see Denisa's brother. What was meant to be a short trip became something much bigger after they were drawn in by the city centre's atmosphere. After a lengthy process of organising their business, home, and family, they made the leap.
Denisa, 35, a mother of two, told the ECHO: "We fell in love with Liverpool because at three o'clock in the afternoon, you could walk down the high street and hear live music coming from different places."
From 'lifeless' streets to a warm welcome
She added: "There were so many people out on the street that my first thought was, 'There must be a concert somewhere.' We followed the crowd and realised it was just live music along the streets."
"It was such a different lifestyle from the place we were coming from. We didn't have much going on in our high street - very few shops, not much social life, and you couldn't hear live music. By six o'clock, most of the shops were closing. It was lifeless."
Leon, 37, said that while preparing the studio and putting stickers on the windows, people would stop every day to congratulate them and say it looked beautiful. He noted that in their previous city, people asked how much they paid in rent, but in Liverpool, people were genuinely happy for them.
Building a new customer base
The studio, Arcade Tattoo and Piercing, opened in July. Leon said: "A lot of people already knew us from our previous location, and they've been leaving reviews online. Now that we're in Liverpool, people can find us on Google again, and it's been a really good surprise."
He added: "I was checking Google recently to see what was new in piercing, and I found that our studio was being recommended among the best piercing shops in Liverpool. I was so happy to see that."
Leon's career spans more than 20 years of tattooing, having started as a teenager doing temporary painted tattoos on the beach during summer holidays. Denisa said more than half of their clients have already returned within the first three months, which is what any business wants.
She added: "To start here, fresh with our family and a new business has been amazing. People in Liverpool are very happy and very friendly. That's one of the reasons we like the city so much."
"Every time we return home to visit friends and then come back and enter Liverpool from the motorway, we look at each other and say, 'Oh, we're back home'. We're really happy here and we really want to prove ourselves to Liverpool through our work."
