By William Smith
Burlington Vintage & Co., owner Chelsea Stevens knows the difference between shopping and browsing.
She sees that difference in her customers’ faces. Relaxed smiles and kind words that spill from their lips. They aren’t just there to look at the antique merchandise.
As Stevens put it, they want to be with their people.
“If you want to feel what it felt like decades ago, before the Internet, shopping small brings you back there. It’s just people again, you know — the best parts of people. We don’t argue in real life like we do online,” she said.
Stevens loves people more than the various “antiques” that decorate her shop. She uses the word “antique” loosely. These days, old-fashioned stereos and record players fit the bill. The word “vintage” covers a broader swath of nostalgia — anything 20 years old or older.
“So you get people that come in here, and they find their yearbooks, and that’s always really funny. Because they’re like, ‘Oh, my gosh, I’m in a shop, and my yearbook is here,’ ” Stevens said.
Most of the items in the shop — the ones that need it — are refurbished by Stevens. She has four sons who help run a train museum in the downstairs portion of the building. Most items come from local sellers, but Stevens and her family like to stock up at auctions and estate sales.
“My 16-year-old, he just gets filthy digging through all that stuff at sales,” Stevens said.
Stevens was just like him at her age. She grew up in Argyle – a small Lee County town about 45 minutes outside of Burlington – and moved to Burlington at the age of 12. That’s when she started attending Notre Dame and met her future husband there.
“We started dating my senior year of high school,” she said.
Chelsea’s mother and local business owner, Becky Anderson, also has a passion for rehabilitation and led a capital campaign to restore the once-defunct Capitol Theater.
“When we first moved here, my mom bought a super dilapidated house. She refinished the whole house and made it beautiful. So it was kind of in my upbringing — taking the things that other people didn’t want and making them desirable again,” Stevens said.
Despite her knack for restoration, Chelsea didn’t consider it a career. She was interested in advertising coming out of high school — an interest that dampened once she started college.
“I didn’t know how good I would be at it if I’m not excited about the product that I’m supposed to advertise. So then I ended up switching to economics because I like numbers and I like business,” she said.
Chelsea held several jobs and was interested in becoming a city planner. She interned for the city, just as current parks and recreation development director Eric Tysland was starting his job for the city.
“I learned a lot,” she said.
As life moved on and Stevens grew her family, she stumbled upon an old hobby — a hobby she could use to turn a buck.
“When my children were little, and I was looking for furniture for their room, I didn’t want to spend hundreds of dollars on a new piece of furniture that was fake wood,” Stevens said. “You could get a solid wood dresser for $5. It might need to be scrubbed, it might need painted, it might need refinished. But I had the time to do that because I could do that with the kids.”
So Stevens started flipping furniture from home and selling it on Facebook. Ironically enough, it was similar to how she operated during the pandemic. She would refurbish a piece for a customer, then have them pick it up on the sidewalk.
Stevens has long been fascinated with Burlington and has applied that focus to her shop. Many of the items have a specific Burlington connection.
The building itself has housed many businesses before, including an upholstery store and the Happy Mutant bike shop.
Stevens just happened to know the owner of the building.
“My mom owns this building, and this space opened up. So she and some friends kind of pushed me into it,” she said.
That was eight years ago. What started as an experiment has become a vital ventricle of downtown Burlington’s beating heart.
Stevens has found her people.
“I feel like small business owners are just an interesting group of people because they put all into what their interest is. I just think that’s fun,” she said.