by Marina Pecorino, APP Membership Administrator

The following infographics were presented in the annual Members’ Meeting at Conference. There’s a lot of information here, so I’d like to take a moment to make sure the full breadth of our recent growth is understood.

It’s important to note that our membership changes almost daily. Prior to Conference, the Membership Committee processed all applications received before April 1, 2018, and then went on hiatus until after Conference, so new memberships have a pre-Conference deadline.

However, the same does not apply for changes with existing Members. Keep in mind the nomadic nature of many piercers, moving to different studios, or relocating to different states and countries. These types of changes happen up to and even onsite at Conference.

It seems only appropriate to start from the beginning, so let’s look at the APP Membership Inception to Current graph. The golden columns show the total number of active Members at the close of each corresponding year.

This includes all membership types, and excludes our Corporate Sponsors. The blue line indicates the current active Members based on their join year. So, as an example, looking back ten years, 2008 ended with 254 total Members (a difference of 18 compared to the previous year), and only

16 of the Members accepted that year still maintained active membership at the time that these graphs were created. On the contrary, in 2017, the year ended with a total of 582 Members (a difference of 60 compared to the previous year), and 134 of those active Members (that’s 23%) joined last year! It’s pretty clear to see the incredible growth the APP has experienced over the last several years, with active Members more than doubling since 2012.

This brings us to the Pre-Conference Growth graph. This illustrates the number of new Members between January 1 and Conference of each corresponding year. Keep in mind  that  Conference  does not have a stationary date, so there is a bit of variation with the Membership Committee hiatus I mentioned earlier. Regardless, pre-Conference growth has almost tripled between 2014 and 2018.

Moving to the next set of graphs, we look at our memberships and  sponsorships by type. The first of this set is specific to individual Members and the membership type they fit into. Business Members—piercers with more than one year of professional experience, who meet both environmental and personal criteria—are by far our largest membership category, for obvious reasons. The second graph in this set includes all of

the information from the previous, but also includes Additional Location memberships and our Corporate Sponsors. The Additional Location memberships are used for Business Members who consistently work in more than one approved studio location.

The final two infographics show membership (Associate Corporate, Associate, Business, Business at Large, and Patron Members) by geographical location. The first shows all active Members in North America. California and Oregon have the highest number of APP Members, followed closely by Florida and Texas. The concentration of Members in these areas is somewhat predictable, based on the sheer size and density of populations in these states. The second map shows active Members worldwide. Despite being an international organization, APP membership is highest in the United States, but membership is growing elsewhere. Australia now has the third highest membership by country, most of which were added within the last three years.

The recent popularization and growth of our industry, in combination with the outstanding work of the Membership Committee, and our transition to an online membership system are all partly responsible for the recent prosperity of the APP. That said, the majority of the credit goes to industry professionals as a whole and the increasing demand for excellence. As professionals hold themselves and their studios to higher standards, and look to the Association of Professional Piercers for support, I’m confident that the organization and industry will continue to thrive.