the story of our
body jewelry store

This journey began 2 years ago when I met Rebecca Oicikle. My name is Ricky Fung and I’m the co-creator of @Pierced. I'm also the co-founder of Chronic Ink Tattoos - @chronicink.

“ i disliked piercers and i didn’t understand piercings”

I disliked piercers and I didn’t understand piercings. I disliked Piercers because I didn’t have good experiences with the two piercers I hired before. In hindsight, I was just plain ignorant; disliking an entire plain ignorant; disliking an entire group of people because of a few experiences pretty much goes against what I believe in but nevertheless, I still fell into that trap.

But then in 2015 I met Becky. I met her when she applied to be a Piercer at our Toronto studio. At this point, I had pretty much given up on Piercings. It had almost become an afterthought in our studio. We had irregular shifts and limited jewelry. But then there was something about Becky that made us click right away. We became friends and I started to care more about what she cared about. She was deeply passionate about Piercings. She talks about her 11 year career with so much passion and pride. And, as I got to know her more, I started to understand Piercings more.

What was crazy to me was how much bad quality body jewelry was out there. Piercing jewelry is actually quite complex because everyone’s anatomy is different and you can’t just shove every piercing on everyone. There isn’t a lot of readily available education out there to help people make good decisions. Even being in the industry for almost 10 years, I realized I was both ignorant about Piercers and Piercings

So that’s when Becky and I decided we would try to solve this problem together. We were determined to handpick the best quality body jewelry AND educate people on piercings. We want to pierce people properly, educate them on how to take care of them, and offer them great jewelry so they can enjoy the jewelry they buy for a long time. We wanted to give our clients a lifetime warranty on their jewelry so we knew we had to pick the best.

And this site is the result of our findings...

the worlds highest quality body jewelry all in one place

But before you look at what we’ve created for you, I think it’s important to understand how this journey changed my perception and to a larger extent, how it relates to the crazy world we live in today.

Becky and I couldn’t be more different. She loves dogs and I’m not an animal person at all. She has dyed hair and stretched lobes and I have neither. She likes collecting bones and I like sports memorabilia. She likes video games and I think they are a waste of time. She is a lesbian and I’m straight. She is so sarcastic I don’t even think she knows it, while I try to be funny all the time yet I’m told all my jokes are ‘Dad jokes”. She is so much more than meets the eye whereas I’m pretty much what you see is what you get.

But then again we are also super similar. She is adventurous like I am and we’re both likely to hurt ourselves doing something stupid (our drunken nights are a little too epic). We can talk for hours and we genuinely enjoy each other’s company. We would both call ourselves weird in the most opposite way. We have hardly anything in common on paper and yet I don’t know if anyone else understands me as much as she does, and vice versa.

So why this babble about sameness and difference. If there is one thing we both agreed upon before starting this whole thing - it’s that somehow we will try to bring this world a little closer together no matter what we do or what we end up becoming. Of course, we’ve talked about what happens when we become super rich because we’ve sold millions of jewelry pieces but this always remained the dream - helping to build a world where we no longer judge people so quickly, and where we would spare ourselves from the same judgement.

We focus way too much on who’s like us and who isn’t, we start looking at people based on what they look like, how they dress, what music they listen to, what circles they are in - that we don’t get to experience and enjoy people for who they really are. We’ve already got them in boxes and we don’t give them a chance to surprise us.

we miss out on all the good.
we miss out on ourselves.
we miss out on so much in life.

We are all very much the same and very much different but point is who cares. We are evolving, changing, confused, emotional, multi dimensional people and that’s what makes us beautiful. I feel stupid that I disliked Piercers or any group of people for that matter, and in this journey I’ve learned more about Piercings but mostly I’ve learned a great deal about INCLUSION, HUMANITY, and COLLABORATION, and how we can all contribute to them.

At the end of the day, we are just a body jewelry shop and buying our products doesn’t make you or us better people; but we hope that while you're wearing our stuff and feeling beautiful on the outside, you are also being THE BEST HUMAN BEING YOU CAN BE. Treat each other well, treat yourself well, and enjoy each other. Don’t be angered by the people you can’t change, and don’t live your life being scared of judgement.