How This Vintage Furniture Seller Went From Trolling Facebook Marketplace to Opening a Storefront

Welcome to Good Vintage, a series that goes behind the scenes with furniture resellers and dealers to find out how they got their start, where they get their stuff, and what inspires them to keep it up. Know of someone we should talk to? Reach out.

Last November, Chyelle Milgrom, the 27-year-old vintage furniture obsessee behind the popular Instagram account @fbmarketslut, opened a 1,700-square-foot storefront in Bushwick, Brooklyn, to fill with secondhand housewares from estate sales, thrift stores, and, of course, Facebook Marketplace. She named the shop Chyelle.

"If you had talked to me a year ago, I would’ve never thought that I’d be opening my own store, because I was unemployed [at the time]," says Milgrom, who was figuring out her next move after a layoff from her UI/UX design role. But with her sizable and engaged following as Facebook Market Slut, where she surfaces finds from the platform, and after a brief stint working at a different neighborhood vintage furniture shop, Milgrom felt compelled to bet on herself. "I know that I have a good intuition for design. Why don’t I start my own business?" she remembers saying to herself. In February 2025, after a little less than two months working in retail, Milgrom put together a meticulously detailed 40-page pitch deck to take to potential investors—"friends’ parents who are really wealthy," she says.

Even though her business plan was initially met with skepticism, Milgrom stayed true in her belief that a vintage furniture shop could have a lot of value, especially for young people. For Milgrom, buying vintage furniture is more than bringing a beautiful piece into the home; it’s about acquiring objects that will monetarily appreciate in the long run. "One way to start building wealth is by investing in really high-quality vintage furniture that will either stay the same or increase in value," she says. "It’s kind of like investing in art."

Milgrom also envisioned her shop as a community space and cafe, where she can host figure drawing classes, book clubs, dinner parties, house music listening sessions, and other events. Pieces wouldn’t be haphazardly stacked on top of each other as they are at many other vintage furniture stores. Everything in Chyelle would be staged like a showroom so shoppers can interact with the furniture like it’s in their own apartment. Milgrom would encourage customers to grab coffee, walk around, take a seat, and get comfortable. "My friend’s parents, who share those sensibilities of community, took that seriously and they helped me get started," she says.

After putting a deposit down on the space she found—a former tattoo parlor—Milgrom began crunching numbers. "Outside of the five-year budget, I had a blueprint of the store and made a layout that displayed how much furniture I could fit inside, and the rate it’d have to flip in order for the space to self-sustain," she says. "So far it’s been really good, but totally inaccurate. My calculations were so wrong. For instance, I didn’t realize, especially in the winter, that couches would be flying off the shelves and I cannot keep up with it. I thought sofas would be the slowest to move."

Throughout the week, Milgrom messages sellers she’s interested in buying from, and on weekends she drives out in the cargo van she bought for vintage furniture shopping. She maps complex routes for pick ups and drop offs, mainly around the tristate area. Her friend and roommate Maddie joins to help navigate and keep Milgrom company on long drives. Milgrom isn’t so strict on eras—she’ll collect anything that intrigues her, from midcentury-modern furniture to ’90s decor.

As she heads into the half-year mark of her shop, Milgrom reflects on what she’s learned, and shares advice for shoppers interested in their own vintage furniture hunt.

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