Dave Bean's Cabin Collective is going from strength to strength

Owner of The Cabin Collective, Maitland's first and only tattoo-cafe-hair-music-salon, Dave has been in Maitland for four years now, but if you count the decade he lived in Kurri Kurri before that he's been here for ages.

Originally from the Central Coast, Dave's background is not only in tattooing, but he is also a musician and survival instructor.

It was using his survival skills that he can now add coffee roasting to his list of expertise.

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Travelling the country whether as a tattoo artist or musician, Dave experienced all kinds of coffee shops and parlours.

Inspired by the trendy coffee shops in Melbourne and Brisbane, decided to take on his own unique venture here in Maitland.

"I wanted to bring a bit of a worldly vibe to Maitland," he said.

"I decided I need a big warehouse space to do all these ideas I've got; that was where the cabin was born."

Dave said on a surface level, a bigger city like Newcastle would seem like a better place to set up shop, but at a closer look Maitland was ready for something like this.

"I really wanted to bring something out here instead of being another Newcastle shop," he said.

"Maitland was local for me but Maitland I think is a hub for art and music anyway, so I wanted to be a part of that hub and be a central location for musicians, artists and tattooers.

"People are ready for the growth and something different, we've done it in such a family friendly way as well.

"I think people love that, they can come in with their kids into a tattoo shop effectively and and book their next tattoo, or even, depending on the the age of the kids, often the kids will sit in the cafe with a hot chocolate while their parents are getting tattooed and listening to music, so it's nice."

The latest addition to The Cabin Collective's offering is the hair salon.

Dave said the collective was always going to have a barber at some point, but when the opportunity came up to purchase the salon next door it was the perfect opportunity.

"When this came up I was like well that's better, it keeps the hair separate for obviously cleanliness reasons," he said.

"Now we're up to four hairdressers, one barber and are on the search for another barber.

"It's going awesome over there, the girls are becoming booked out for two weeks in advance now."

Dave said tattoo culture has changed a fair bit over the last decade.

"Crude tattoos or crude places for fun, that kind of stuff has dropped off a lot over the last 10 years," he said.

"People are choosing really good tattoos and they're really planning stuff out now, whereas that wasn't so much in the past.

"There's way more custom work than there ever was, I worked in a time where there was flash on the walls."

Dave said the age group for tattoos is evolving as well.

Years ago he would have maybe one customer a week over 55-years-old, but now it would be unusual to not have two or three people over that age in the studio.

One of the most special tattoos he has made was his grandfather's first one at age 88.

"I got his Parachute Regiment tattooed on him," he said.

Dave said he learnt his entrepreneurial spirit from his parents.

"I learnt that you don't have to work for someone, you can do it yourself," he said.

He has two children, 15 and seven, and the eldest works in the cabin's cafe.

So what's next for The Cabin Collective?

"The way my brain works, I will always keep expanding which is a great thing and a bad thing at the same time," Dave said.

"Look, I think where we're at we'll keep building the hair side, the bar we've just built we'll start sending that out more often, and then just keep refining the business we've got.

"There's definitely a few things in the pipeline that I've just got to tell the brain to hold off for a little while."