The Abridged version:
- Stardust Vintage Emporium moved to Fair Oaks in December after securing the new location in October.
- The store works with 50 vendors to offer vintage furniture, glassware, clothes and other items that do not need to be rehabbed or repaired.
- “It’s not a thrift store,” said owner Karen Chance. “It’s a high-end vintage mall.”
- The store is working on reopening its popular mini-movie theater and bringing back parking lot events.
“Our favorite thing is when someone walks through the door and their jaw drops. That makes it for us,” said Karen Chance, owner of Stardust Vintage Emporium.
The emporium, an expansive vintage and collectibles mall with dozens of vendors, first opened in 2021 in a retail space tucked away on Micron Avenue in Rosemont.
In December, Stardust moved into the former Scandinavian Designs building on Sunrise Boulevard in Fair Oaks. The new store’s showroom is triple the original size, and located on a busier road.
“It’s been great. Our other location was good. There was nothing wrong with it, but this has gotten so much more visibility,” Chance said.
“We’ve had so many of the Fair Oaks residents come in and say thank you for doing this, because it had been sitting here derelict for a while,” she said. Scandinavian Designs, a modern furniture store, closed in April 2024.
From hobby to vintage shop
Karen Chance comes from an interior design background and has loved collecting antiques since her early 20s. She began her career in the antiques business as a vendor at the former Midway Antique Mall on Madison Avenue in North Highlands.
“I ended up with four booths and loved it and said, ‘I think I could do a really cool job of this and do something even more than just a store, more of a destination,'” she said.
She began the process of opening her own store with her son and daughter in the fall of 2019. Even when COVID hit, they continued building out their warehouse on Micron Avenue, opening the original location in May 2021.
A family business
Max Chance, Karen Chance’s son, says they work well together. She takes care of the store design and furniture restoration, while he handles the business side.
“I’m a big strong guy with not a lot of color and creative stuff, so I’m happy to just, ‘Hey, put this couch here, this couch there,'” Max Chance said. “I’m really good with the numbers.”
The family business works with 50 vendors, with another 190 vendors on its waiting list.
“It’s not a thrift store. It’s a high-end vintage mall and you what you get here is… a product that you don’t have to rehab. Our clients don’t want to reupholster a sofa or make repair a radio, so we have people that do electronics, we have people that do woodworking, we have people that we have an alterations department for our clothing,” said Karen Chance.
The store focuses on big furniture pieces and smaller glass items, Max Chance said.
“There’s so many different types of genres of stuff because even just the clothes versus the record department, there’s such a different market,” he said. “There’s different clothing items that get popular and different vinyl record stuff that gets more popular.”
The love for vintage
The store caters to a wide variety of customers, with items ranging from the 1950s to the early 2000s. Karen Chance sees the appeal of vintage items in two ways — one being nostalgia.
“People love going, ‘Oh my god, I had that when I was a little kid, or my grandmother had that or my mother had that,’ and it reminds them of their childhood. It reminds them of happy times with their family,” she said.
The second appeal of vintage items is their impact on the environment, she said.
“Instead of buying something that is newly made, you buy something that has been rehabbed and around for 60 years that’s not going to the landfill and it’s also higher quality,” she said. “A lot of the stuff made today are quick throwaway stuff. It was great when you were maybe in dorm room, but when you start, buying your first home, they’re looking for something that’s gonna last and also appreciate.”
What’s next
As the Chances settle into their new store, they are working on experiences that make the space more than just a place to shop.
One popular feature at their old location was the mini-movie theater that customers could rent as an events space. The store intends to re-open the theater in early 2026.
“You can watch any movie available. You can play Nintendo or Xbox,” Karen Chance said. “We’ve had bingo in there. We’ve had a wedding and three proposals. It’s beautiful.”
“That was one of the biggest things we heard on Reddit. ‘They’re moving, but are they taking the theater?’ And I’m like, yes, of course I’m taking the theater!”
The Chances are also working on opening a garden department for garden art and patio furniture. They also plan to reintroduce parking lot events, such as sales and car shows.
For Karen Chance, the best part of running the business is talking to customers and bonding over their shared interest in vintage items.
“People can come here and sit down… and they can talk to their friends, and they can take pictures. They can look for a gift. They can come in and find something that really means something to someone.”
Stardust Vintage Emporium at 4301 Sunrise Boulevard in Fair Oaks is open Thursday-Monday from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m.
Shelley Ho is a producer with PBS KVIE, and a visual journalist for Abridged.