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."
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.
"I live on Facebook Marketplace," Flodstrom told me.
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.
That instinct for salvaging and transforming discarded materials helped turn Flodstrom into a working artist — though he still sounds surprised by the title.
"I wake up, and I'm an artist, which doesn't even feel real to say," he mused.
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.
"Besides those details, there was, like, no direction, and I was cool with it," he said.
Cracking the Instagram code
Flodstrom initially moved to Los Angeles to pursue music, but he figured out how to monetize art and design first.
Growing up, he never thought of himself as an artist. Still, he liked making things with his hands — "little baseball bats out of wood," he said — and modifying old toys. Today, he describes the physical act of creating and building as a kind of meditation.
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.
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.
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.
Turning views into dollars
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.
The first version, which he made for his apartment, cost roughly $50.
People wanted to buy it immediately — hundreds of DMs flooded through, he recalled — 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.
Around that time, NO LOGO, a company that helps artists bring designs to market, reached out and offered to make a sample at no cost, he said: "If they had told me to pay for the sample, this never would have happened. I would not have had the faith in it."
Flodstrom reviewed the sample, promoted it on his website, and linked his Shopify store to NO LOGO's manufacturing system. The final product, a $225 sculptural side table that buyers can customize, generated $150,000 in gross sales in its first two weeks, he said. Business Insider reviewed a screenshot of his sales dashboard showing $253,000 in sales over a 90-day period beginning February 27, 2026.
The viral hit quickly changed Flodstrom's finances. Before the table took off, he said, he was living on about $1,000 a month, using EBT for food, and primarily teaching swimming to make ends meet.
"I was, like, piecing together 500 bucks, and then all of a sudden, I could pay my rent," he said, adding that he has since stopped teaching swimming and moved into an apartment with his own room for the first time.
The logistical challenges of a viral product
The pill bottle's quick success also introduced Flodstrom to the less glamorous parts of running a business built around a viral product. At the time of our interview, he said hundreds of orders were delayed in customs. He estimated that about $80,000 in Shopify funds was unavailable to him while the orders remained unresolved, even as he continued paying for production.
"It's just super stressful," he said.
His business is also highly dependent on Instagram, where nearly all of his sales originate. One of his "worst fears," he said, is having his account restricted or removed. "I wouldn't have a business without it."
Flodstrom said he hopes to diversify through YouTube and continue developing new work. He's wary of treating one viral product as proof that he has arrived.
"I don't want to get ahead of myself," he said. "It's a big pill bottle. I'm not Van Gogh out here."
When our call ended a little after noon, Flodstrom planned to go to Home Depot and perhaps downtown Los Angeles to source materials. He also needed to edit a video of him restoring a chair and make another ad for his pill-bottle side tables.
Being an artist is more like a conventional job than people might assume, he said: "Every job is just the next task."
