As you may have noticed, we’re in the process of rebranding so we thought now would be a good time to tell you all about us and explain why we’re changing.
We (Keith and Vivienne) started The Attic Dunfermline at the beginning of 2023, with an idea of selling quirky, unique home decor. The idea was to buy a load of cool shit, decorate the house with it, use the house as a show room/home and if someone saw something they liked, they could buy it. So, after a few drinks and a bit of browsing we made our first business purchase. We’re not the type to start small, so we bought the item in the picture up there…
An 8 foot hanging airplane bar!!! For £2000!!! Fast forward a year and it’s still in the garage, so if anyone likes it, has space for it and the means to collect it, get in touch, you can have it for what it cost us as it’s now just gathering dust and taking up valuable stock space. Where do you even sell such a thing?!? If anyone has any ideas or knows anyone that wants an airplane bar, please let us know!
Back to our story… While we waited for the plane to be made and shipped, we bought some cool cast iron signs and tried to decide on a name. Keith’s previous business was Keith’s Attic so after a few more drinks, the creative geniuses that we are, decided to drop the Keith and add a “the” and “Dunfermline” tada! The Attic Dunfermline was born.
Our plan was to do classic car shows to get the name out there and gather a bit of a following but we realised that we would need some more stock and maybe some automotive stuff, so we thought we’d give some tin signs a shot. We had no idea how popular they were going to be, how quickly we would start selling out or how many requests we would get for different things. Over the summer, we progressed from cars, to motorcycles, to tractors and tools. We don’t have a clue in general, but especially about bikes or tractors, so we took requests and bought what we were asked for. This has worked really well for us and our range has now expanded to over 300 different designs which now also include music and film, record covers and food and drink.
We had a great summer doing car shows. We are a pair of fannies who are daft about each other and like a laugh so you’ll usually find us having a drink, a snog and a good giggle about something when you pop by our stand. Keith’s well known for getting blootered and Vivienne will be able to tell you where the “good” toilets are. Luck is never on our side, with punctures, burst air beds and a cooker that went on fire last year, we’re (cautiously) looking forward to what the coming years will bring, but we’ll always be laughing and carrying on.
Towards the end of the summer we stumbled across the banners. Folk seemed to love buying stuff for their garages and man caves and 8 foot banners at a tenner seemed a no brainer. As expected, they flew out the door and we were soon receiving requests for all sorts. We now have over 50 different designs and still have more to add in the coming months.
Over the last year we’ve expanded our product range even more with lots of automotive cast iron items, super cool valve caps, cute little gonk bottle covers for Christmas and of course the one and only Baw Hair Ruler – another drunken idea we thought was pure genius and designed ourselves. We know we’re a pair of absolute fannies, so thought it would be a great idea to announce the fact on our first (and very possibly our last) ever product design. Check it out here Baw Hair Ruler | Retro Motor Man Cave (Previously The Attic Dunfermline) (square.site)
During the last year, we’ve realised that “The Attic Dunfermline” doesn’t really fit what we’re all about any more. It’s taken us the best part of the last 6 months to come up with a new name – apparently we’re only creative when it comes to baw hairs (or maybe we just didn’t have enough alcohol) – but we’ve finally decided, actually, we put what we’re all about into a random name generator and it decided, we will now be known as Retro Motor Man Cave. We realise it’s a bit long winded, but felt each of the words in the new name were pretty important in describing what we do. We love all the retro stuff, we’re into cars, do car shows and have a lot of motor related stock; and the majority of our customers decorate their man caves with our items. Maybe we’ll cut it down a bit and go by Retro Motor’s or The Man Cave. We did consider taking the first letters of each and going for remomaca – not very memorable but apparently is close to beetroot in Spanish, so we considered beetroot but thought that might be a bit daft, even for us.
We will continue to do what we do, to listen to what our customers want, to learn about different things that interest different people. We’re planning bigger and better this year. We’ve just bought a van for doing the car shows (no more blowing up air beds at 4 in the morning – if you were at car shows last year and were disturbed by us, we apologise!). We’ve also bought a bigger gazebo and have invested hugely in stock. We had hoped to start an online store, but we’ve found that we’re much more hands on, face to face people so will continue to use the website mainly as a catalogue and to keep everyone posted with what we’re doing and where we’ll be over the year. We’re so grateful for all the support we have received this last year and hope that you will all continue to follow and support us as we grow bigger and better. We’ll continue to be the daft fannies that we are and are planning to share more of our personalities and daftness along the way so you can really get to know us. Thank you for everything, from advice, to recommendations, suggestions, likes, shares, comments and of course your custom!
