For a guy whose favorite number is five, 2025 will be hard to top for Michael Easter, owner of Love Me Two Times at 1740 S. Harvard Ave. Reaching 55 re-sellers under the roof of his 5,000 square foot vintage mall during his store’s fifth anniversary year is as serendipitous as it comes.
Easter has been a vintage procurer since he was 7 years old. He recounts how he would take his $2 allowance as a kid and bicycle to go to garage sales. “You can make your dollar stretch a lot farther if you’re buying used,” he says. “It became a lifelong love story of me and vintage.”
A former teacher, Easter used to sell vintage in antique malls as a side-hustle. After 10 years of that, he took a leap to open his first store, which operated only on weekends while he continued teaching. Following seven years of running his own business, including the launch of a second location, Easter gave notice to his school district and signed the building lease for Love Me Two Times in February of 2020.
While the timing might seem ill-fated for a retail launch, Easter says that Covid will always be part of his story. “My contractor and I built out the mall in the spring of 2020 wearing masks and social distancing … and I opened the store at the end of May as mask mandates went into effect,” he says. “Not only was I running my first ‘big’ small business as a career, but I was also suddenly in charge of monitoring safety guidelines … It was a steep learning curve.”…