If you’ve walked down Ocean Street recently, you may have noticed a unique business, Artemis Plus Size Thrift. It opened early in 2021, and I recently caught up with the owner, Chelsea Rourke. She told me that “For as long as I can remember, that was how I wanted to buy my clothes. As we all know, the world is not necessarily very inclusive for plus-size bodies. And it was always something in the back of my mind throughout my life when I dreamed about whether I would start a business. The idea I always had was, Oh, God, I want to start a plus-size thrift store.”

I asked her where the name Artemis came from, and she said, “So Artemis was, you know, a goddess in mythology who is sort of the goddess of the hunt, but for me, it was at a point in my life where I was really redefining just everything about my life. I was living at the time with my brother, and he was a tattoo artist in training here in Portland, and I got my first tattoo. It is a depiction of Artemis pulling back a bow, kind of shooting off into the moon. But really, the whole idea was that she doesn’t know where the arrow is going to land. So when it was time to name the store, it is what is the most personal to me and what represents overcoming some of the fears that I had.”

MH 

How did it feel when you walked into this store for the first time?

CR 

Well, when I walked in for the first time, I was only very casually thinking about a brick and mortar. So a friend of mine who lives in this nightville area texted me and was like, you know, this space is open. I think you should call them. I don’t know what possessed me, but I did. There was a person who was supposed to go before me, and probably would have rented it, but they never showed up. So the landlord was like, if you like the space, I can give you until tonight, but I would need you to make a decision. I walked in and I could envision it. It was that crux moment where you either say yes or no.

MH

So, this is the first place you ever looked at.

CR 

Yep, this was the first place we looked at and the evening that I looked at it, I had to make a decision as to what we were going to do. And I really believe to this day, if I had said no to this place, I never would have made the transition to brick and mortar.

MH 

How does it make you feel looking back on where you started with Artemis, as an Instagram page, versus you now have a whole store? 

Well, it feels amazing. I’m so proud of where Artemis is today, and looking back over the time, it’s just crazy to me, the steps that we had to go through to get here. I kind of became this mobile unit that would go and meet you and look at your clothes and decide what I could sell. I had to really quickly learn the marketing ins and outs of Instagram. We were on Instagram for about 16 months doing that.

MH

What did that process feel like, internally, for you, what were the steps like, mentally and emotionally you had to go through? 

CR 

I think initially in starting the page, it still was a little bit of that, Well, who do you think you are? I think that’s probably one of the biggest hurdles, is just starting and realizing that you don’t have to know everything to just take a step. You think that other people in business know everything and it’s really smooth and clear, and what you come to understand is that it’s not and that every person is taking that risk in that journey to learn. 

MH  

If you could go back in time to before you started Artemis, is there anything you would tell yourself, anything you would have liked to do differently, or advice you’d have?

CR

Yeah, I think the advice that I would have would be to be patient and understand that the trajectory of your own business, it will never echo or follow another person’s. I would tell myself not to be afraid to dream larger than where we’re at. That’s what my unofficial motto is to dream big and I think that’s kind of a play on being big and also dreaming big. 

MH  

Is there anything you would say to your younger self, knowing everything you know now about Artemis and your life?

CR 

I would tell her to never think that if there’s something that she wants to do or accomplish that only other people get to do, that. I would tell her that taking risks is how you get rewards in life, and that by risking, you actually open up many doors of possibility. It will make you understand more about yourself and have faith that the universe is going to try to help you accomplish those things. 

“My biggest hope is just that, reiterating to people how important it is to go to the small businesses that you care about, because for as much as this is the best idea, all it would take is you just forgetting about it for a little while, and then business suffers. It’s made me realize, personally, how important it is for me to spend money at the stores that I care about too.”

Look out for more of this story in the print edition.