Hershey teen vintage furniture collector turned successful furniture store owner shares his story

• Aniya Faulcon
  BioRecent Stories

  

  Aniya Faulcon is The Spark Host/Producer for WITF. She has a passion for shining a light on unique people, experiences, and perspectives within the community.
  
  Previously she worked as the People and Social Trends Reporter/Video Anchor for LancasterOnline | LNPNews. During her time there, she created video packages, provided Facebook Live coverage at community events, and wrote data-driven stories with census data and feature stories on local leaders, non-profit organizations, events, and people with unique talents and experiences within Lancaster County.
  
  Aniya also worked at WMAR ABC 2 News as a Sales Assistant and at the AFRO American Newspapers as an Executive Assistant and Media correspondent. Aniya interned at WEAA Gospel Grace 88.9 and worked at her alma mater’s radio station, WWPJ at Point Park University, where she gained skills and a passion for radio.
  
  Aniya grew up in Baltimore, Maryland and attended the Baltimore School for the arts for high school with a concentration in acting. She continued to hone her skills and passion for storytelling and later graduated from Point Park University in 2018 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Acting and Broadcast Reporting. Aniya is eager to continue her journey with storytelling in her role with WITF, as she aims to shed a light on real people and real stories within Pennsylvania in a variety of mediums.

 Bruno Andrews

David Rosenwasser and Jeremy Bilotti at Rarify’s showroom.

Airdate: Thursday, January 5, 2023

As a teenager, David Rosenwasser, Hershey native, had a unique hobby of collecting vintage furniture. He was ostracized for his interest in that hobby as a kid but later became a successful vintage store owner and millennial design authority.

David, who is now the Co-CEO and Founder of Rarify and his colleague that he met in college studying architecture, Jeremy Bilotti, Co-CEO and Founder of Rarify joined us on The Spark Thursday to share their story and the importance of their work in the world of fast furniture.

“I got to see an Eames lounge chair when I was about twelve or thirteen-year-old and that basically sparked this amazing interest in design and architecture, which has kind of shaped where we are today.”

Rosenwasser gained an obsession for the work of Charles and Ray Eames, 20th century modern furniture innovators. He saved money from his minimum wage job at the Hershey Pharmacy to buy his first Eames chair. After that, Rosenwasser’s obsession grew and he began searching Craigslist to find the cheapest vintage furniture pieces to restore and flip, while being a high school student.

“It was something I actually kept off to the sidelines and was a little embarrassed off because I realized it wasn’t normal or something other peers were doing,” Rosenwasser said. “What I actually found was that others around me only started taking an interest when they realized that I was actually making money from doing this and of course, that wasn’t my goal whatsoever.”

A man in the Philippines took an interest in Rosenwasser’s work and asked to buy a shipping container of his collected furniture to start a furniture store in the Philippines. He bought Rosenwasser’s entire collection, that he accumulated while in high school, for $120,000, which was the seed money for his and Bilotti’s business, Rarify.

Rarify is a company that offers authenticated furniture from modern furniture innovators in the 20th century and present day designers.

Today, Rarify’s business is held in a 40,000 sqft. warehouse and showroom space in Lebanon.

With Rarify, Rosenwasser and Bilotti are seeking to bring about change in the world of fast furniture by educating people about the benefits of buying vintage authentic furniture, how to identify high quality materials and raise awareness that there are high quality products at low price points.