Cleverly laid out merchandise catches the eye, while the scent of old clothes intertwines itself with a soundtrack not found during the standard Salvation Army affair. The atmosphere is apparent as soon as a customer walks in the door.

As a vintage shop with intricately crafted artistic displays and a healthy dose of eccentric flair, Haystack Vintage, 2934 N. Broadway, has carved a niche for itself among thrifters and bargain antique hunters since opening in July.

Local entrepreneur Philip Tadros—who also owns coffee shops Dollop Coffee, 4181 N. Clarendon Ave., and Noble Tree, 2444 N. Clark St.—partnered with employees John Mokate, a senior television major at Columbia, and Erin Liston, a former theater arts major at Illinois Wesleyan University, to break into the vintage resale business. Tadros, a former Columbia student, finds pleasure in taking over businesses or starting up new ones, his first being Don’s Coffee Club in Rogers Park when he was 19. Local artist Brian Heiser created the vintage shop’s imaginative displays, which include floating picture frames, dangling paper cutouts and a dozen books with pages folded skillfully in origami-like designs.

While the store might currently be stocked with relics of decades past and interesting curiosities, that wasn’t always the case. When the group acquired the building in May 2008, it had housed a liquor store and sported walls of well-used industrial refrigerators to prove it.

“We acquired the property in May and had to do a gut-rehab before we opened in July,” Mokate said. “It was a lot of work; the place had drop ceilings and refrigerators lining the wall.”

The three friends got the idea for Haystack Vintage while working together at Dollop Coffee, which Tadros founded in 2004. They knew people who had interesting things to sell and decided to take advantage of the opportunity, Mokate said.

Much of the store’s original stock came from a pair of 70-something-year-old twins, who Tadros befriended while working in Evanston, Ill. In the three days it took for the pair to choose a cell phone to buy at Tadros’ store, Tadros learned of their collection of vintage wares. When it came time for the twins to part with the goods, they looked up Tadros.

Since then, the Haystack staff has begun the process of hunting down their own goods, which tend to be priced at the higher end of cheap and aimed toward the typical college-aged budget.

“That’s part of the fun,” Mokate said. “My hometown is known for its antique malls, so I developed an interest in antiques. I’m not so much into pristine antique items as much as we are cool and interesting stuff, like old projectors and stuff like that.”

Like any vintage store, Haystack’s inventory is rich in character. An old red table standing prominently toward the store’s rear can be linked to an older woman from Indiana whose nomadic lifestyle briefly included operating her own restaurant, where the table sat before eventually finding its way to the Haystack floor.

“There’s a lot of interesting pieces,” said Alicia Moreno, a 19-year-old student at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a customer at the store. “And the way they lay out the items really gets your creative juices flowing; you can start to see these items in your home.”

But Haystack’s inventory isn’t all used goods. Displayed throughout the store are pieces created by local artists, including artists popular on the crafting site Etsy, like Isotope and Jen Brown, who create graphic tees and garments reconstructed from vintage clothing, respectively.

“Local artists find us, and we find them,” Mokate said. “We’re always on the lookout for new artists to work with.”

While the vintage market might seem crowded in the city limits, Haystack is concious of ways to help them stick out among their competitors.

“I’d like to think we’re more eclectric than other stores,” Mokate said. “Not only in just our range of products but our range of time periods. We have stuff from the 20s all the way to new products being made by local artists.

While the recent recession and harsh winter may have initially slowed sales, business is still steady, Mokate said.

“We’ve been doing pretty well,” he said.

“When we were still setting things up the day before we opened, we forgot to close the door, and people off the street just started coming in. We ended up deciding to just start selling anyway.”

Their sales may be consistent, but that might be the only thing that stays the same around the store.

“We’re constantly getting in new stuff,” Mokate said. “And every week the entire store looks different.”