We were lucky to catch up with Raquel Haralambou recently and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Raquel, thanks for joining us today. Let’s start with the story of your mission. What should we know?

Retro Renos is a two family owned and operated business that was started in the Haralambous garage in 2019. Daniel Haralambou purchased a Scamp travel trailer for $800 and planned to renovate it. His 8 months pregnant wife and co-founder Raquel Haralambou thought this idea was a bit insane. Being a relatively handy guy with some good knowledge on electrical and plumbing work and how to properly use a drill, Dan’s project came to fruition. The client was overjoyed with the final product and Retro Renos was born. Scamp campers are made of fiberglass and are much smaller than your average 5th wheel rig. The process of modifying the existing shell into a one of kind, modern look suddenly became second nature for Dan and Raquel. With each completed client project, they realized they loved bringing life back into these vintage campers. In 2022, Dan and Raquel brought on lifelong friends, Emily and Stephen Usina as co-owners of Retro Renos. Emily with a marketing and customer service background and Stephen with a business development and operations director background. It just seemed like the perfect fit. In July of 2022, both families with their children Maleigha (Dan and Raquel’s 4 year old daughter) and Johnny (Stephen and Emily’s 1 year old son), took an 18 day, 15 state road trip up to Minnesota to the Scamp headquarters for the inaugural Scamp Rally. They renovated a 16′ Scamp in 4 days and pulled it 5,000 miles on their trip. Now, as 2022 comes to an end, Retro Renos approaches the new year with more camper projects on the books than the year before. A new, exciting year ahead.

Raquel, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

Retro Renos is a two family owned and operated business that renovates, repairs, modifies and sells fiberglass campers. Brands of campers include Scamp, Casita, Boler, Burro, Uhaul, Big Foot, Oliver, Escapes and any other fiberglass camper brand. Renovation work to existing campers includes new paint, finishes, flooring and subflooring, installation of new AC system, electrical and plumbing updates, new awning and screen door installation and much more! We also specialize in making campers custom fit our clients needs with things like custom bunk and closet systems, storage solutions, handi-cap accessibility-we have even made custom cat shelves inside a client’s camper.

The ideal Retro Renos client is someone who has a camper they are currently in-project with that has DIY’d as much as they can. We take it from there with the big ticket stuff and make it the camper of your dreams. We also sell campers if we have inventory. Our brand is all about fun, family and adventure. We are two families who love to travel and create one of a kind experiences. At Retro Renos, our mission is to highlight the classics while bringing the modern conveniences of today to you. Our goal is to treat each travel trailer with the love and respect it deserves, adding contemporary design elements while still maintaining their classic charm. Our team loves campers, plain and simple.

We have also started building out mobile shower and laundry stations out of contractor cargo trailers for a local nonprofit, Free Flow. We hope to have more opportunities to build out projects like this that give back to our community.

How’d you meet your business partner?

Daniel and Emily actually grew up together in youth group at church. In 2021, Stephen and Emily purchased a Scamp for themselves, with the help of Dan and Raquel. Dan and Stephen worked on renovating that camper at the Retro Renos shop, turning it into the camper of Emily’s dreams! After working together so well and realizing that two sets of hands was better than one, Dan and Raquel approached Stephen and Emily about becoming co-owners of Retro Renos in March of 2022. The following month, the papers were signed and Retro Renos went from a one family company to a two family company and the dynamic has been killer ever since.

Can you tell us about what’s worked well for you in terms of growing your clientele?

Retro Renos has always been a direct referral business whether that be from word of mouth or social media, all leads have come in from some kind of contact referral. As a team, we attend fiberglass camper rallies throughout the year like Eggs on the Hiawassee, Scamp Rally, Falling For Fiberglass and this coming year, the Smores Rally in our own backyard here in Florida. We get to meet fiberglass camper owners and introduce our services that they may need someday. We really enjoy being involved in the camper community and are excited to see it continue to grow over the years. We also rely heavily on our social media and YouTube presence, posting fun team reels and relevant camper-related content that further drives that uniqueness of who we are and what we do. Our camper clients are our clients for life and we are so grateful for each and every contact we have made along the way.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.retrorenocampers.com
• Instagram: @retro_renos
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/RetroRenos/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCLDW0j0OOm5LYKH_rpypFNw/videos