KINGSBURG – While some may need three tries to make something work, entrepreneur Casey Hansen and her collaborators only needed one try to make both of her businesses successful.
With help from the Kingsburg District Chamber of Commerce, Hansen officially opened her business 3rd Time’s a Charm Vintage Market in downtown Kingsburg on March 21. The store features repurposed and refurbished home decor and furniture, and Hansen said she wants everyone in the community to feel welcome there, regardless of if they set out to buy anything or not.
“I tell everybody … just take a little piece of heaven from my store, because when you come in here, it’s a whole vibe,” Hansen said. “It smells good, it looks good, it feels good, it sounds good, and I don’t want anybody to think that in order to come into my store they have to buy something. I want them to just come in and … enjoy my happy place.”
The downtown Kingsburg location is a variation of Hansen’s other enterprise, 3rd Time’s a Charm Vintage Market and Venue, which can be found on Second Street in downtown Selma. That spot is a cooperative, in which Hansen rents out spaces to small-scale businesses that all have their own names and unique products.
While Hansen said she loves the cooperative business model, giving hobbyists and artisans an opportunity to have a space to call their own without the burden of operating a full business, 3rd Time’s a Charm Vintage Market in Kingsburg is all her own.
Many of the items found in the Kingsburg location were acquired and refurnished by Hansen herself, but she also operates the market as a collective. This means that she has a group of team members — specially chosen to participate in her collective — who are Hansen’s source of inventory and whose pieces she displays and sells in her store.
“It takes a special kind of people to come together and make a collective, because it has to be a team, and there’s no ‘I’ in team, so it’s a lot of work,” Hansen said.
3rd Time’s a Charm Vintage Market had a soft opening in Kingsburg on March 7. Hansen said she found her way into the “Swedish Village” after multiple patrons of her Selma store told her to check out the neighboring city.
“I took a little field trip and I came down here to check it out, and I just fell in love with it,” Hansen said. “As soon as you turn onto Draper Street and you see all the little Dala horses, it’s like, this is a really neat community.”
At a ribbon cutting ceremony for the grand opening, Kingsburg District Chamber of Commerce Executive Director Lauren Nikkel described Hansen and her store as “living proof that there is always something charming to be found in what seems like nothing — diamonds in the rough if we just take the time to pause, look a little closer (and) maybe apply a little bit of creative elbow grease.”
“With a passion for restoring furniture and curating home goods to elevate basic spaces from cursory to charming, Casey and the folks at 3rd Time’s a Charm Vintage Market absolutely practice what they preach and live up to their name,” Nikkel said.
Inside the market, patrons can find items that range from vintage to antique and to newer and modern. It’s not quite a thrift store, as each piece put on display is restored and hand-picked, but the prices are reasonable and manageable, Hansen said.
Each item for sale at 3rd Time’s a Charm represents a rejection of a disposable culture, where instead of discarding items because they’re broken or because the owner wants something bigger and better, 3rd Time’s a Charm says “this isn’t trash; this is something we can still do something with,” Hansen said.
Located at 1461 Draper St. 3rd Time’s a Charm Vintage Market is open from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday.
