Meet Steven Rush of 5 Star Vintage in Sun Valley

Today we’d like to introduce you to Steven Rush.

Steven, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
My whole idea for this business came from buying Johnny Cupcakes shirts off of my friends in High School and reselling them on eBay. It worked so well that I thought maybe Thrift Stores near my house had more Johnny Cupcakes shirts I could flip for extra money. So I started going to thrift stores in search of Johnny Cupcake shirts I could sell.

Little did I know, finding Johnny Cupcakes shirts at thrift stores is almost nonexistent. So I started finding old sports jerseys and jackets. (ex. Champion Michael Jordan Bulls Jersey or 90s Polo Jackets) I would find older clothes and post them on eBay and just reinvest the profit into more inventory. I was in High School, lived at my dad’s house and didn’t have any bills so I could invest everything back into the business.

After high school ended, I decided I would start my own .com ecommerce website. eBay at the time was charging me 12% fees on all my items, and I noticed there were other people selling stuff online, but their prices were 5x-10x more than mine. I wanted to make my website special in the sense that it felt almost like an online thrift store — nothing overpriced and super affordable.

So on July 1st, 2012 I opened my own website 5starvintage.com.

Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
In the almost seven years I’ve been running this business it definitely hasn’t been smooth haha. I took this business cross country with me to college. Ran the whole operation in my 300 sq ft shared dorm room. Juggled playing college basketball and still being able to walk to the thrift stores in Boston, MA every Sunday.

After a year of school and basketball, I dropped out and moved back to where I started, my dad’s dining room. I moved to the Bay Area in 2014 for three years. I ran my business out of my step moms cottage for that span. And recently I moved back to Southern California. I now operate my business in my 800 Sq Ft garage.

The biggest challenge has been storing and having enough room to operate, take photos, launder clothes, and ship packages. The challenge I struggle with now is getting this business to a different level.

Alright – so let’s talk business. Tell us about 5 Star Vintage – what should we know?
5 Star Vintage is an online thrift store specializing in 80-90s era jerseys, jackets, and t-shirts. Everything on the site could be worn by male or female. Generally, more men shop on my website though. Day to day operations include sourcing clothes (my favorite part), taking photos of each item, editing them, measuring each, so customers know how the clothes will fit, and shipping packages out.

The thing that stands out to me the most about the business is I’ve always kept prices affordable. Customers who buy off of 5 Star Vintage realize that the quality doesn’t have to suffer just because you paid less for something. Which is a gift and a curse because, especially now, people think if they spend a lot of money on something it means they paid for high-quality goods and from my experience a lot of money for an item doesn’t always mean it was made the best way or made with quality in mind.

So I’m glad that I have that medium of quality and affordability. I often hear from people who find my Instagram or Twitter they’ll say “WOW I just found your page, it’s a hidden gem how do people not know about this!?” I think that’s the best/worst thing about what I have done. 5 Star Vintage is big enough where I can live off of it but small enough where I still have to run it out of my garage haha.

When I started this in 2012, there was no one else selling reused vintage clothes online for the prices I had. NO ONE. People I met along the way would try and copy it and they would either lose faith because they weren’t making 150$ an item or just stop because they couldn’t keep up with sourcing clothes and still keeping prices low. So keeping that part in my business is something I’m truly proud of.

Any shoutouts? Who else deserves credit in this story – who has played a meaningful role?
Although my parents were very supportive in the beginning, I would nominate all the audiobooks I used to listen from Robert Kiyosaki as a huge mentor in my life. I would do everything for the first two years of business with those tapes.

Car rides, gym, walk around the garage (the office) anything I did I would listen to them. Some for the key principles he talks about I still think about and use. Most of the audiobooks are about Real Estate, it still helped me to think differently about money.

As I’ve got older, I realize that just from those audiobooks I’m a step ahead of most of my peers. Not saying I’m rich or extremely wealthy, but how I manage the money I make now is a lot more effective than it would be if I didn’t have those audio tapes.

I look back on being 17 almost 18 starting this business, and I can’t believe I was doing this at such a young age. Where did I get the audacity to do this?!

Random side note: I remember taking apples from my neighbor’s tree and then reselling them to my neighbors for a quarter. I don’t know where I got that from either. So the credit maybe goes to my instincts? Also, I realize “Taking” Can be replaced with the word “Stealing.”

Contact Info:

• Website: 5starvintage.com
• Email: [email protected]
• Instagram: instagram.com/5starvintage
• Twitter: twitter.com/5starvintage

Getting in touch: VoyageLA is built on recommendations from the community; it’s how we uncover hidden gems, so if you know someone who deserves recognition please let us know here.