When I called Oskar Flodstrom on a Wednesday, late morning, the 23-year-old Los Angeles designer politely asked whether we could talk while he was “kind of working on something.”<\/p>\n
He was restoring a Sonneman Orbiter lamp he had picked up on Facebook Marketplace for about $30. If he cleaned it up well, he said, it could be worth thousands.<\/p>\n
“I live on Facebook Marketplace,” Flodstrom told me.<\/p>\n
He has developed an eye for overlooked objects: He recently found a Paul Smith rug for $50 that he believes could fetch far more, up to 10 grand, after a professional cleaning. In Los Angeles, at least, he’s noticed that convenience can outweigh price, and many sellers, particularly those with money, would rather have an item gone than hold out for a better offer.<\/p>\n
That instinct for salvaging and transforming discarded materials helped turn Flodstrom into a working artist \u2014 though he still sounds surprised by the title.<\/p>\n
“I wake up, and I’m an artist, which doesn’t even feel real to say,” he mused.<\/p>\n
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Flodstrom grew up in Illinois, skipped college, and moved to Los Angeles with about $400.\u00a0<\/p>\n
NO LOGO<\/p>\n
Flodstrom grew up in Peru, Illinois, a town of roughly 10,000 people that he describes as “the middle of nowhere.” At 18, he chose to skip college and drove west with about $400, an apartment found through Roomster, and a plan to make rent by delivering DoorDash orders.<\/p>\n
“Besides those details, there was, like, no direction, and I was cool with it,” he said.<\/p>\n
Cracking the Instagram code<\/p>\n
Flodstrom initially moved to Los Angeles to pursue music, but he figured out how to monetize art and design first.<\/p>\n
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Growing up, he never thought of himself as an artist. Still, he liked making things with his hands \u2014 “little baseball bats out of wood,” he said \u2014 and modifying old toys. Today, he describes the physical act of creating and building as a kind of meditation.<\/p>\n
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Flodstrom’s $2,000 vintage Mercedes in Los Angeles.\u00a0<\/p>\n
NO LOGO<\/p>\n
For years, he made pieces while stringing together income from side hustles, including swim lessons. He sold the occasional artwork, but “nothing was really popping,” he said.<\/p>\n
Over time, he came to realize that going viral on social media wasn’t entirely a matter of luck. He studied what appeared to make videos perform well: a fast, three-second hook and engagement signals such as retention, comments, shares, and saves.<\/p>\n
Flodstrom began posting short, fast-paced videos documenting how he made his art. A video of a brick mirror he made for his own room drew about 3 million views on Instagram. He followed it with other offbeat pieces, including an avocado chair and a giant pill-bottle side table that later drew tens of millions of views across social media.<\/p>\n
Turning views into dollars<\/p>\n
The pill-bottle side table began, like many of Flodstrom’s designs, with an item he found on Facebook Marketplace: a piece of curved acrylic. He transformed it into a two-foot-tall pill bottle, wrapping the base in orange translucent vinyl, forming a lid from foam and plaster, and printing a prescription-style label at Staples.<\/p>\n
The first version, which he made for his apartment, cost roughly $50.<\/p>\n
People wanted to buy it immediately \u2014 hundreds of DMs flooded through, he recalled \u2014 but turning the handmade piece into a product presented a different challenge. Flodstrom said he contacted manufacturers and found that producing the design in the US could cost about $400 per unit before shipping.<\/p>\n
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Flodstrom’s pill-bottle side table sells online for $225. Buyers can customize the prescription-style label.\u00a0<\/p>\n
NO LOGO<\/p>\n