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Business of Home Podcast
From social media stardom to vintage resale, Rarify's founders are building a new kind of design brand
00:58:07
David Rosenwasser and Jeremy Bilotti, the founders of Rarify, share the story of a company that's part vintage reseller, part furniture dealer, part social media phenomenon.
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- [00:04]
Dennis Scully
This is business of home. I'm your host, Dennis Scully. Every week, I'll be speaking with leaders and innovators from all corners of the home industry. My guests this week are Jeremy Bellotti and David Rosenwasser, the co founders of Rarefy. Jeremy and David met at Cornell's architecture school and bonded instantly over their shared love of modernist design. Over the past 10 years, they've built Rarify into a unique and multifaceted company. One that combines vintage resale, E commerce, a contract furniture dealership, and a retail store in Philadelphia. Not to mention a popular Instagram account that draws millions of views for its deep dives into the past, present and future of great furniture. I spoke with Jeremy and David about how $120,000 sale to a collector in the Philippines gave them the seed money to started, why they're looking to break up what they call the commercial furniture mafia, and why their ultimate ambition is to take what knoll was in 1948 and remake it for the modern day. This podcast is sponsored by leloy. For over 20 years, Laloy has been a leader in the home textile industry by upholding the highest standards in craftsmanship and and customer service. See the newest collections of Laloy rugs, pillows and wall art at Vegas Market this summer from July 27th through the 31st. Showroom appointments are highly recommended and you can make yours today@laloyrugs.com that's L O L O I rugs.com and don't forget to follow laloyloyrugs on Instagram and TikTok. And now on with the show.
- [02:01]
Jeremy Bellotti
Jeremy, before we jump into the conversation, I wonder if you would be so kind as to tell us a little bit about what Rarify is today, the multifaceted operation that it is. Explain it to us.
- [02:16]
David Rosenwasser
Sure. And thank you so much for having us, Dennis. Rarefy is an independent designer led source for unique and rare furniture. Originally, it started over 15 years ago as a collection of vintage furniture and has grown to represent and source from over 100 of the most coveted manufacturers in the world.
- [02:37]
Jeremy Bellotti
So 15 years ago. Which means that the two of you were actually pretty young when this operation got going. Yes. David, my crack research assistant, also known as the lovely Mrs. Scully, came running down the stairs while she was in the midst of researching with a photograph of you and your dad looking out the back of a vintage Porsche. I guess your dad was restoring this car, perhaps with your assistance. You looked to be wearing some goggles at the time and.
- [03:07]
Dennis Scully
Right.
- [03:07]
Jeremy Bellotti
And doing some work there. Tell me about that scene, and I have a sense it was part of how this whole operation got going.
- [03:14]
David Rosenwasser
Yeah, I think your senses are right and your research team seems to be very, very thorough. So, yeah, I grew up in Hershey, Pennsylvania, which is home to a. The largest antique auto show, I think, in the US or the world. And yeah, I grew up in basically what was a suburban house in a rural ish area with a hospital nearby, and had sort of no reason to be interested in architecture of modern design, but grew up around a lot of making and a lot of craft. So my dad always was interested in woodworking and fine tools and watchmaking and woodturning and also car restoration. And as I was a little kid, I was never that interested in sort of the metal work and the welding of auto restoration, but I was really interested in sort of finer and smaller scale stuff. So woodworking was more so my interest. When I was about 12, my mom had gifted my dad an Eames lounge chair and ottoman. So the classic Eames lounge in ottoman. And that sort of landed in our house like this kind of alien. And that in and of itself got me hooked up on, yes, the work of Charles Rheims. But also then what is this stuff and what is a part of. And so then that then spurred an interest in architecture through learning about the furniture. And as a hyper obsessed, weird teenager, I thought that the most natural thing to do was I couldn't own the buildings or touch the buildings that often that were coveted, but I could definitely try and work a minimum wage job and save up and find the cheapest, crappiest examples of important works of design, which sort of meant like, I want an Eames chair. How do I get an Eames chair? And so the first piece of furniture that was mine was an Eames LCW that was ordered new from Herman Miller in Walnut that we actually have here in the basement in our showroom. And shortly thereafter I realized, oh, actually I'd like to work on this stuff. So very quickly would get familiar with Craigslist and ebay and be buying things really just to hoard and hoard and learn and amass a collection of stuff that turned out by accident to become a business.
- [05:30]
Jeremy Bellotti
Well, that was the thing. You actually amassed quite, quite a substantial collection from a young age. Yes.
- [05:36]
David Rosenwasser
I mean, yeah, what was pretty nuts is that I was a free intern at this architecture office in Lebanon, Pennsylvania, and that architect, who is fantastic Kelly, gave me the option to just hoard and store stuff in the vacant offices of his office building as long as he didn't have a tenant, and he never had a tenant. So I had all these offices that I could fill up. And what that meant was that as this interest developed and as it became time to apply to architecture school, one thing happened which was fantastic and unimaginable, which was getting into Cornell's School of Architecture, where I met Jeremy. But the other thing that happened was I had this habit now of affording to buy more furniture by selling off pieces one at a time. So I would buy two Eames Aluminum group chairs from the 1970s, and I would sell one of them, and I would make enough money that I could go and buy another piece of furniture. And this was just to amass a bigger collection, because architects kept telling me that architects didn't make enough money to have all of this great stuff. And so I thought, oh, okay, well, I'll get all of it ahead of time.
- [06:43]
Jeremy Bellotti
If you pursue architecture, you'll never make enough money to have all of this.
- [06:47]
David Rosenwasser
That's what it was. Good advice. Yeah. And so by senior year of high school, just got into Cornell, this gentleman in the Philippines reached out. He had bought an Eames lounge chair in Ottoman. And he said, hey, David, I really like this. I was wondering if you could fill up a shipping container, because I want to open a vintage furniture store in the Philippines. And so at the age of 18, he wire transferred me over that summer. $120,000.
- [07:11]
Jeremy Bellotti
Unbelievable.
- [07:12]
David Rosenwasser
With a Word document that I had put together that said, you know, here's a George Nelson cabinet. It's going to need full restoration. It's $2,500, but it will be fully restored. And, you know, the only photo he saw was a junkie one of it pre restoration. And he just sort of blindly trusted the banker in Hershey, Pennsylvania. Had to check with my mom about what all these wire transfers were.
- [07:33]
Jeremy Bellotti
Yes, you could see some eyebrows being raised, right?
- [07:36]
David Rosenwasser
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was dealing stuff, but it was just furniture. And. Yeah. And then what that meant was, at this very young age, I would soon go and meet brilliant Jeremy at Cornell's amazing School of Architecture. And also there was this sort of seed funding that allowed a vintage business to sort of start and get off the ground at a kind of bizarrely young age, thanks to. Thanks to this gentleman in the Philippines.
- [08:02]
Jeremy Bellotti
So, as you say, off you go to Cornell, where you meet Jeremy, who also has developed an interest in this area. Jeremy, so tell us how you come by a fascination with all of this.
- [08:18]
David Rosenwasser
So I grew up as the kid who spent all his afternoons all Summer long drawing and painting and making little things and folding origami. Anything I could figure out how to do that had anything to do with art, I was trying to do. And eventually I took painting and drawing classes just locally with a family friend who was an artist. And her home was kind of this modernist oasis in the middle of this kind of suburban New Jersey landscape. I hadn't seen anything like what I saw in her house. There was a Vasily chair and there were beautiful paintings that she had done. I kind of became obsessed with not only art, but then also these sort of modernist icons of design. David and I immediately clicked when we first met each other. We were fast friends, and we went through architecture school together during a period of time where architects were quickly gaining access to robust software and digital tools and manufacturing technologies that had become accessible to them. And so we were kind of living this dual design life where during the day we were learning about the history of architecture in the 20th century. And then after class we were working jobs in research labs and learning how to use and program robotic arms. It just so happens that all of these digital and manufacturing tools are also some of the same tools that are used to manufacture furniture and kind of interesting and high design products that we now work with all the time. So we sort of both during this period of time, developed a deep fascination for all these technologies and at the same time, an appreciation for design history.
- [10:18]
Jeremy Bellotti
And it seems during this time that neither of you felt strongly about pursuing architecture or wanting to continue on in the field, David. I mean, help me understand that a little better.
- [10:34]
David Rosenwasser
Yeah, I think what was interesting to us is that we both, as maybe fourth and fifth year students in the architecture school, had become really interested in the research arm of design and architecture schools. We were involved in a research lab led by Jenny Sabin, who is an incredible designer and researcher based at Cornell. And so we learned to be very, very skilled researchers and also how to build these really interesting tools. Jeremy, More so on how to build interesting computational models. And I think we were getting more and more hooked about maybe becoming academics, because I think within the field of architecture, we saw it as a field that students and young designers were often sort of like getting taken advantage of. Right. The pay is pretty poor given the quality of education that's required in most cases. And I think, moreover, also we were just getting very excited about working together because we realized that we complemented each other's talents in a very meaningful way. And so we wrapped up at Cornell and we sort of realized two things. One was that we were on this research track that might allow us to go to these really incredible graduate schools. And also that maybe we wanted to start a business together. And boy, oh boy, if we could get into, for instance, Harvard at mit, that would be a really amazing place to maybe take some entrepreneurship courses and use that as a sort of ground to experiment and to figure out what we would do as a launching pad afterward.
- [12:08]
The business went through a whole bunch of iterations. At one point, Rarefy was a robotic ceramics fabrication company. Because, of course, yeah, that would have been an interesting path to go down. And we were very excited about it for a period of time. You know, Rarefy was a whole bunch of things and we were kind of floating around about what it should be. We were taking an independent study course with Stephen Burks, who was a Loeb fellow at Harvard, former guest on the show.
- [12:41]
Jeremy Bellotti
Sure. Big fan.
- [12:42]
David Rosenwasser
Yes, Stephen, great person, great designer. And he became a really influential mentor of us both during that period. And I remember we were sitting in a coffee shop with him at one point having a meeting, going over all of our ideas, which there are always too many of them. So Stephen was always trying to help us pare them down. And at one point, I think he stopped us and he said, guys, you have all these interests in design and technology. You have this existing amazing collection of vintage furniture and this fascination and experience with furniture design. Why not kind of combine those two things and use the furniture as a sort of foundation to build this business? So the idea for Rarify sort of became a digital gallery. That was the kind of original concept. So the medium would be furniture design. And then the context and the way it's presented is that it would be a. A gallery that exists in digital space. Right. We were sort of anti showroom, and now we have a showroom in Philadelphia. But at the time, we didn't want.
- [13:51]
Jeremy Bellotti
Turns out the industry really wanted you to have a showroom.
- [13:53]
David Rosenwasser
I feel like, turns out the industry wanted us to have a showroom. But at the time we sort of had this idea that it was going to be sort of a digital born practice, which it still is and it still has that DNA.
- [14:05]
Dennis Scully
And what was the digital gallery going.
- [14:07]
Jeremy Bellotti
To be all about? And how did that fit in with everything else that you wanted to do?
- [14:12]
David Rosenwasser
David Part of this was that we were in these very technology focused programs, Right. So we're trying to think of this through the most ambitious technology focused way we could. And so Jeremy had done a. We ended up doing joint theses, both for undergraduate and for Graduate school, but where Rarefy was inherently tied to both of these thesis projects. And on my end it was focused on 3D scanning and looking at that Mason technology as something that could adapt and translate to a vintage dealer. Having a gallery that was sort of unprecedented, using 3D scanning to show the depth and high resolution of a Nakashima desk that we had, for instance, and that you could visualize these things online in a very cutting edge way. And on Jeremy's side, it was looking at AI and how you could use surveys and models and information about design and furniture to create something very compelling and learn about. Learn about these pieces or maybe the market for them through that. It's sort of reductive. But I think what we. What we learned more so. And what we were strategic about too, is forming connections with some really phenomenal people while we were in graduate school. So that's how we connected to John Edelman, who's become a mentor of ours, as well as the Buckbinders who own Emeco. And many of those mentors are still kind of close friends and colleagues of ours today. But I think in part, being students at Harvard, at mit, really helped us to shove our way into the door of this, what I think is a quite gatekept community or field where we were trying to break in to become dealers of a lot of these different manufacturers who are sort of legacy companies as a means of taking the vintage business, taking a step forward and saying, we want to engage with designers, architects and beyond in the contemporary context. And through doing that, we can't only be providing vintage. We also need to be dealers of these companies to be working at scale on large projects and we have greater ambitions. But I think we wanted to take a step aside and maybe put our ego aside a little bit and say, okay, we want to build a sustainable business first before we do something more grandiose. Because we don't want to take on investment. We want to run this company the way we want in perpetuity.
- [16:39]
Jeremy Bellotti
And you had this seed money from the Philippines wire transfer right back in the. With the container full of.
- [16:47]
David Rosenwasser
Okay.
- [16:47]
Jeremy Bellotti
And so the idea was that was at least going to be your starting working capital for what this business was going to become. And the vintage was still a sizable inventory you had. But you also realize that in order to get past the gatekeepers, to your point, that you really needed to become dealers, which turns out not to be so easy to do.
- [17:14]
David Rosenwasser
Yeah, exactly. I think what we used to help us, in addition to being students at these prestigious schools, was that we had this large and quite impressive vintage collection to rely on. Right. And that $120,000 of seed capital had at that point six to eight years now to spin and get reinvested, sell more chairs, buy more chairs. And so this was already thousands of pieces of furniture, not nearly as much as what we have today, but was, you know, maybe 10, 15, 20,000 square feet of warehouse space, where now we have 80,000 square feet of warehouse space. And our age was definitely something that, that was a hindrance that we were, I don't know, 26 or something like that at the time, trying to talk to Casino and Poltrona, Frau and all of these brands that run in a. In a maybe antiquated sort of model of the showroom and all of this. And we were trying to push as hard as we could, even though there was resistance to both our age and the way we were running a business model and the lack of showroom. And so we, we built a small. Well, we built a 10,000 square foot showroom in Lebanon, Pennsylvania, which visually looked great but did not pass the test for some brands. It was satisfactory for others. And yeah, we kept coming across these hurdles of why we couldn't become dealers of brand A or B.
- [18:36]
Jeremy Bellotti
But eventually you got there.
- [18:37]
David Rosenwasser
Yes, I will say yes, we did get there. And now we work with over 100 manufacturers. And I think what got us there initially and has continued to was just a genuine expression of our passion for design. For example, Emeco was one of the very first companies that we worked with. And so we sort of learned from that. And, you know, sooner or later, one, one at a time, each of these manufacturers that we revered and had known so well for many, many years, because we had seen all of the product as vintage furniture started to come around and kind of agree to work with us. And the goal ultimately was to be able to work with our colleagues and friends and others in the community on larger projects, building projects, development projects, in order to kind of bring better design to a larger scale.
- [19:38]
Dennis Scully
Well, so help me understand that better.
- [19:40]
Jeremy Bellotti
When you say you wanted to work on larger projects and bring better design at a larger scale. Tell me, tell me what your hope and expectation is.
- [19:50]
David Rosenwasser
We wanted to kind of put aside, like we. We discovered through becoming dealers how much BS and bureaucracy and how much. Yeah. How much political issue there was with the industry. So when you go to a beautiful new tower by some fancy schmancy architect and you look inside and you go, why is all this junk inside? You know, what's the Rationale for that. So, for instance, we were in some gorgeous tower that was newly finished in Philadelphia by Eniad. And I looked inside and I thought, like, the furniture is awfully ugly. Why is it all so ugly? And I think the quick answer is it's the politics and the sort of mafia that is the commercial furniture industry, right? So why is there a convenient substitution for from one piece of furniture to another? Well, it's because in the contract dealer world, it's probably because whoever got the main contract isn't going to make as much money on it. So, so what we kept seeing was for the interior design world or for the architectural interiors universe, furniture that was getting specified was not about great design quality. That ended up just being about who is getting more, who is making more money through an FF and E spec. Because everyone has allegiances to these huge three Fortune 500 furniture companies, right? And this is, I think, a known thing, right? It's Miller, Knoll, Haworth and Steelcase as sort of the, the powerhouse entities within the commercial furniture landscape. And so we wanted to, you know, not that we detested these companies, but it's more so that we wanted to come in and say, hey, we want to offer a design first approach to working on these projects, and we're going to try and stubbornly get our way into the door, if we can, to work with these architects who we admire and interior design firms that we admire to hopefully engage in these projects at scale, whether it's through vintage pieces that get restored, through brand new work, or through work that we might be able to work collaboratively to create new designs that we bring into a project.
- [21:48]
Jeremy Bellotti
Well, so help me understand, David, to follow up on that, why your sense is that this is somehow different from your everyday value engineering that we know goes on in any hospitality project, right. Or project of any, any scale. So, sure, they saw the original sample of this beautiful wallpaper made by some higher end to the trade brand, but really what they need is something that's a dollar a roll. And then, so, I mean, tell me why this isn't just that in, in your mind.
- [22:22]
David Rosenwasser
I see it as more complicated because there's so much consolidation happening in the commercial furniture industry, right? We know that Hayworth owns Poltrona Frau, which owns BNB Italian or whatever all of these kind of complicated relationships are. And Herman Miller acquired Knoll, or however you want to put it, and they own Design Within Reach, which owns these other companies, and Edelman Leather and Spinnybeck, et cetera, et cetera. And so it Means that the portfolios of work that you see in projects are quite isolated. And it means that inherently, architecture firms, it's maybe like going to a sub shop and you can only get Pepsi products or Coke products. And actually there's a different range in both. Right? You're limited not because you're actually limited, but you're limited because there's so much power that these major commercial companies have in the industry. Miller Knoll dealers on a big tech campus have a lot of power to control and influence a project. And that sometimes will take priority over what the architects or designer's intent is.
- [23:32]
And it was fascinating coming from the architecture world into this industry, the furniture industry, because we also saw the architect side of things, and we saw the kind of rigor and passion that would often go into a design and then as it kind of gets passed down the line and the ultimate furnishing and fit out of a space. Once that happens, the kind of design intent or the ideas would get very diluted or maybe were completely mismatched with the original intent of the architect. And I think to some extent we're operating a business, but we're also trying to sort of protect the integrity of the design of projects simply out of principle and passion.
- [24:15]
Jeremy Bellotti
I'm still trying to understand was the hope that you would get to a big enough scale, that you would be powerful enough somehow to influence this in a meaningful way, at least in some of the projects that you're working on. Is that the idea, Jeremy?
- [24:29]
David Rosenwasser
Yeah, absolutely. And I think what's also important to us is the idea of higher quality furnishings that kind of goes right along with it. We had seen from working in the vintage furniture world just an unbelievable and shocking scale of waste that was coming out of commercial renovations, commercial projects. So, for example, take a tower in New York City, right? In Manhattan. Entire floors of large commercial spaces in these towers were often getting cleared out of their furniture, sometimes very expensive furniture. And a lot of that was either getting thrown directly into the dumpster or was being wasted in some other way, right? So we were kind of working in the back end of this world by sort of buying up parts of liquidations and things like that. And so we started to get a sense of the scale of waste. And our hope and sort of desire is to bring higher quality furniture into the industry, into the building and construction industry, as well as bring higher quality design into that world, so that the items that end up in building projects can stay there for longer. People appreciate them for longer. There's kind of love and passion and value in how they look and how they feel, as well as how they're made.
- [25:58]
Jeremy Bellotti
And it seems another important component of the business related to that is this educational arm. And you've established a huge following on Instagram. I think as I came on the air, it was around 220,000 followers. And you're routinely creating this really interesting educational content around vintage pieces around design, the history and heritage of who all of these people are. Tell me how that fits in with this model.
- [26:31]
Dennis Scully
David?
- [26:32]
David Rosenwasser
The way we started the social media was simply that we didn't really have any. We didn't have any money for marketing, and we needed people to figure out who we were and what we were doing. So while we were still in graduate school and just as the company had started, we started experimenting with this. And as nerdy and obsessed people trained in architecture, we were focused on these really high resolution images of moody stuff in the warehouse or another space and really concerned about full length videos of crisp resolution. It took us forever, but eventually we landed on a groove where people were responding really well to videos of us nerding out, preferably with a concrete floor and a white background on classic pieces of design that we knew really well. And that started really taking off. And we also started noticing that a lot of important interior designers, product designers and architects started following us and sort of religiously taking part in commenting in the discourse. That was the sort of educational platform that was formed. And I think something we looked at that John Edelman would talk about regularly was creating a sort of community platform. And in the universe of watches, I'm sort of a watch nerd too.
- [27:50]
Jeremy Bellotti
You and John Edelman both?
- [27:52]
David Rosenwasser
Yes, exactly. There's a company called Hodinkee that does an incredible job of building a business through engaging a community of enthusiasts. And that's sort of something we see as a North Star, which is that our objective is not only to. We're not just sitting around trying to figure out how to make the most money possible. We're trying to figure out how to run a sustainable business in a way that we get to engage with the people who are passionate about the same things that we are. So what was phenomenal about the vintage collection we had is that we had virtually unlimited resources, physical resources as far as furniture to make content that was new and different all the time. And as the social media grew, what's important to note too is that many of those companies that were telling us all the reasons why they couldn't work with us suddenly shifted and it became, oh, actually how can, how can. Oh, wait, how do we get on those videos? It's like, well, it would be really awfully nice if we could work with you as a, as a collaborator. And what's great too is that the companies we were pursuing were only companies we were interested in from a quality and design history perspective. And so it often meant that maybe we were getting access to returns and second quality pieces that had been old showroom models. But then with the case of a few brands, we would get in tractor trailer loads of fascinating pieces that we could then photograph and resell sort of in the same pipeline as the vintage and also use to create content. So there's both sort of some circularity going on there as far as how things get back into the market and also a way of educating our community on pieces that were much more contemporary production. So some examples that we never had access to for vintage would be works by Foscarini, which we've loved to learn about in the past few years, a relatively recent company founded, I believe, in the 80s that has their heritage in Murano glass, and the Dutch manufacturer Moy that we feel is sort of at the cutting edge of experimentation and design. And we had the privilege of getting access to some of their most wild and crazy works that we could then make video content of and teach people about what's going on today, in addition to what was going on in the 1980s, 1960s, 1940s, etc.
- [30:21]
Dennis Scully
We're taking a quick break from the show to remind you about Leloy. This spring, Laloy launched two exciting collaborations. Discover bold modern rugs and pillows from their new collection with Jeremiah Brent. And don't miss the latest season of Magnolia Home by Joanna Gaines. Fresh designs you'll love. Explore both@laloyrugs.com that's L O L-O I rugs.com and follow eloirugs on Instagram and TikTok. And now back to the show.
- [30:58]
Jeremy Bellotti
I wonder, can you, can you remember a moment where one of these brands, as you were just describing, that you've been trying to work with from, from a distribution standpoint or have some kind of a relationship, can you remember one of them actually reaching out to you when they noticed, I assume, the growing scale of your social media following or seeing this content you were creating?
- [31:21]
David Rosenwasser
There was one manufacturer that told us it was something to the effect of, oh, we'd never put our product in that ugly warehouse like that. We took great offense that right. Because we're trying to bust our butts as much as we can to make an impact. And we started realizing also that it was sort of the loss of the manufacturer if they didn't want to engage with us. Because at least for a time, we were getting regularly 1, 5, 6, 7 million views on a lot of these videos that we were doing, which frankly was unprecedented in the industry. And even, even at lesser numbers, our account is sort of still unprecedented in the industry as the, as the sort of wave of video and social media adapts. But once we maybe amass, you know, 50,000 followers or something to that effect, there was a cloud of brands who had been very disinterested, who suddenly were knocking and calling and asking how they could send us things, et cetera, et cetera.
- [32:17]
Dennis Scully
So it seems as if throughout all.
- [32:20]
Jeremy Bellotti
Of these efforts it was, and you said earlier, you're really just trying to create a sustainable business. It sounded as if you were trying to find whatever revenue you could to really build the business that you wanted to build. Which I take it at this point isn't really about being a furniture showroom per se. There. There's so many other areas that you want to explore. So tell me, Jeremy, more about that.
- [32:48]
David Rosenwasser
Well, David and I were both originally trained as architects, as we mentioned. And despite not becoming architects, we always have an itch to make stuff and design stuff ourselves. And something that happened a lot more quickly than we thought it would was the opportunity to begin designing our own products. And we thought that, you know, hey, let's put our heads down, you know, let's be humble, let's build a sustainable business first. And that's what we've been doing. And the opportunity came along thanks to some great technology as well as the kind of innovation of the manufacturer. At Gantry, the opportunity came around to design a light. So Gantry, over this past year, and kind of just before New York Design Week this year, reached out to us and said, hey, we have this new technology. We're opening up a manufacturing technology for plant based manufactured lights to designers. Would you be interested in designing a light right away? We said yes, because we knew that their additive manufacturing technology would make it so we could do this really quickly. It wouldn't be expensive, we didn't have to invest in all kinds of dyes and tooling. And that was the only way we were going to do that this year. So we did it. We turned it around in just over a month and a half. They were just fantastic to work with, which is kind of interesting because they're both a design company, but also a technology and Manufacturing company, which we sort of vibed with.
- [34:22]
Jeremy Bellotti
Yes. You could feel the kinship there. And we've talked about Gantry on the, on the show and written about it a little bit. I mean, it seems as if they want to make small scale manufacturing possible. Yes. Is that sort of what, what is driving part of their, their mission? Is it all, it's not all plant based per se, or is it.
- [34:43]
David Rosenwasser
It is. So. So to, to tell you a little bit about the product that we designed using their manufacturing methods as a kind of a case study. It's called the Cube One lamp.
- [34:54]
Yeah.
- [34:54]
And the idea is that it's a frame made from authentic USM hauler components, which David and I both love and use all over our homes. We're obsessed with it. It also has this kind of longevity and sustainability aspect because it can be reconfigured and it's made of steel, so it's very long lasting. Within that cube, we've designed an entirely plant based translucent lamp. So it's kind of a cage with a light inside of it. And the idea is it's both. It's half components that will last a really, really long time and can be passed down generations and half something that is durable but will eventually biodegrade if discarded. So we're sort of trying to approach our own products in that way with this idea of quality, high quality design and longevity and sustainability just built in. Just because that's the way we've always thought about design and products. I think it's just lit a fire in us where now we can't stop thinking of other collaborations and other products that we could begin to make. And I was on a long car ride with David last month and we were just talking for hours about our ideas about what we could do, what kind of exhibitions we could do in New York, for example, about new product designs and innovation in design.
- [36:17]
Dennis Scully
Well, and it seems as if a.
- [36:19]
Jeremy Bellotti
Lot of what you want is to bring other people along, show them the capabilities that are out there and as you were saying earlier, hopefully get people to think about designing better stuff or using better design things in general. Has that become a big part of your mission, Jeremy?
- [36:38]
David Rosenwasser
Absolutely, 100%. Because we appreciate kind of established designers who do fantastic work. But we also recognize that there are a lot of designers out there that are doing great work that get no exposure or have very little access to many of the manufacturers, for example, that we have worked hard to kind of establish relationships with as a dealer or retailer. So I think the hope is to kind of give really great designers, an opportunity to create a product and sort of blast it out to an audience of enthusiasts or maybe connect with other manufacturers. And then also by building the sort of project and sort of scale side of our business, I think the hope is that we can put some more innovative design from new designers into big projects.
- [37:27]
Jeremy Bellotti
Also getting back to the, to the sustainable business and again, funding this part of the operation. Did you find as the social media following grew and all of these people were geeking out on your content and wanting to participate, and there's a little bit of one upsmanship that seems to go on in the comments where different followers want to prove their deep knowledge and share some quirky little factoid about something. Did that start to translate into a meaningful customer base or how did that monetize itself in a meaningful way?
- [38:05]
David Rosenwasser
David yeah, the business side of how we've operated has been very tough, frankly. Right. Because we've entered, you could say, the showroom model or the E Commerce furniture business model at a time that there's so much power consolidation money coming from other huge companies. Right. And so as we wanted to become dealers to try and get, you know, little relationships and sales with people we knew and sort of grow a business naturally that way, we came across all of these hurdles, like needing to spend a million dollars on a building in a city like Philadelphia, that maybe we didn't have the money to do that to begin with, or we were going to need to spend years trying to figure out how to cobble this stuff together to make it happen. Right? So it's sort of bizarre that what's allowed us to grow to where we are now was this vintage business, which frankly is a lot more profitable because it's within our capacity and control to decide where we source things from and where we, how much space we have at our warehouse, what we charge for things and what we pay for them to get them in the model that is being a dealer of varying manufacturers. What's been amazing about that is getting to know a lot of the high level executives or owners or designers involved in these incredible companies. But the sort of downside is that frankly, the margins on a lot of this stuff suck. So you need to invest a ton of money in a physical space, in a customer service team, us staying up, you know, way too late to answer customer emails and try and, you know, do our best just to get a small margin. When Design Within Reach, for instance, is offering these crazy sort of unprecedented sales that much of the industry thinks is a sort of race to the Bottom to juice up Miller Knowles profits for, you know, the next quarter or what have you, which I don't think is a secret. So anyway, one part of this that's been very interesting is that by having this huge following it's allowed us some level of clout or community building that's been fantastic. That audience is much younger than most of the audience of many of our kind of competitors. And so we see that as we hope, work and time and love and energy that's well spent, whether it's going to benefit us now or 20 years from now when some of those junior designers are maybe leading architecture and interiors practices. I think that's how we look at Instagram. Yes, every now and then it translates to sales. But it's not like us having a huge following automatically makes us a ton of money because the reality is when we'll get 5 or 10 million views on a video, it may be from a manufacturer that can be, you can price compare that across a hundred different online shops and showrooms, et cetera, that are all hungry to cut everyone else's margin apart. So part of our interest in engaging in large scale building projects is to some degree out of necessity, I think, to give folks a sense of why we're involved in so many parts of this business. It's because we have to be. Nowadays we need to be a retail channel that allows a young designer to buy the piece of furniture they always wanted that's pretty affordable. We need to be a good business that helps the small scale A and D market. And ideally, if we can grow to be sort of powerful enough in this space or get in projects at the right time. One thing that can be transformative and that can help us to kind of achieve our goals later down the line is to be the FF&E people for large scale projects because those give us a multi year Runway, hopefully. And also even with really, really razor thin margins, allow us to invest back into what we're really passionate about, which is doing either custom pieces for a project and bringing new designs and new experimentation, innovation to the market, or to bring that same sort of energy to products that are available to, to the retail side. But, but our ambition effectively is we want to grow maybe the more precedented side of the business which is kind of contract and you know, furniture, FF&E procurement and sales. We want to grow that so that we hopefully, you know, our vision would be we want to be like Noel was in 1948. We want to have an incredible workshop full of robotic arms and woodworking tools and CNCs and carbon fiber and whatever the most sort of innovative technologies and materials are at the time. And we want that space to be full of designers who are passionate and experts in those fields so that they can be creating radical new work that contributes to back to the design community in the same way that was going on sort of in post World War II America when knoll was growing through the Knoll Planning unit and with Florence Knoll, among other things.
- [43:17]
Jeremy Bellotti
And so part of the hope, it sounds like, is that more designers will discover you and all that you're doing and come and join you in some way, hopefully bring their creative designs and ideas along with them. And then all of you can collectively figure out how to make exciting new furniture and lighting and as you say, bring more innovation to market and more original design, but also perhaps greater quality design than a lot of what's on offer.
- [43:52]
David Rosenwasser
It sounds like absolutely something that we're, we're always sort of critiquing is the kind of level of rigor and innovation that's happening in furniture design, specifically furniture and lighting currently. And it may just be a symptom of the American market and the economic conditions and the manufacturing conditions of the country and the world. But we're sort of constantly disappointed that there isn't more interesting design happening, right? Like when, when we see a new product released and it's a new colorway of something that was designed 50 years ago and that's, that's, you know, called a new product, that's a big bummer to us. And we also don't feel that it's necessary for good new designs that are innovative to be extremely expensive. Certainly there needs to be some value and there needs to be some level of quality. But by kind of building up this collection of both vintage and kind of new products that we work alongside manufacturers to sell, we've seen and combed through and developed a digital database of thousands of products and millions of data points. And we can very clearly see that there is really good design at a whole scale and range of price points. And so we kind of say to each other pretty often, like, what's the excuse? Why is there not better design happening? And I think there are more and more voices that are starting to say that now as the culture around design, enthusiasm and appreciating design is sort of growing and becoming more robust in the United States specifically. And I hope that we're contributing to that in a positive way with our videos and educational content as well as our kind of furniture fit outs that we're doing at scale. But ultimately as designers, we have to contribute to design and make new design.
- [45:55]
That'S good for the world and is.
- [45:59]
Jeremy Bellotti
Part of the challenge, the stranglehold that mid century modern furniture seems to have on the, on the American design aesthetic. David, I mean, what's your.
- [46:11]
David Rosenwasser
I think to some degree that is a problem, but I think it's sort of a problem by design. Like it's, it's a problem that's been created and calculated to be the problem. So there are only so many big powerful players in this industry with a lot of influence and maybe there are three of them that we've already talked about, right? So Miller, Noel, Hayworth, Steelcase, they have a ton of money and they have a ton of influence. And companies, not just the big ones, but companies medium sized, et cetera, a lot of them don't take a lot of risk, right? So that they, they invest money in reintroducing things that they maybe already own the designs for or they reintroduce works that maybe were, you know, fashionable or trendy in ad, so that the Togo was so popular, among other things. And we see a lack of willingness to both really invest in designers who aren't already super famous, and also a lack of willingness to spend a lot of time, energy and money on R and D. So as an example, it's great if you hire emerging designers to produce new collections, but do we really need another injection molded plastic chair or do we really need another swoopy curvy or cube sofa? When the material, palette and the design and it's all kind of form for form's sake. That's not the sort of innovation we're talking about, I think someone we haven't talked about yet. So Blue Dot plays a big role in sort of how we think about things. And then Moi is also another actor that we consider quite a lot of. Moi for us maybe as we mentioned is like the North Star for how to be a company that works at scale, that puts its money where its mouth is. They bring in really talented young designers and give them challenging briefs or let them have a lot of sort of space to experiment. And they encourage innovation and work in sort of research and new material palettes that mean that they were the first manufacturer to make a commercially viable chair using 3D knitting as one example. And that's really influential to us and inspiring. As well as Bluedot that we see as an example of how a company can be run really well where the products don't have to cost a Fortune and largely be made in the us so if we could sort of have our cake and eat it two, ten years from now or maybe five years from now if we get really lucky, you know what, what do we want rarefy to look like? We want to be doing huge commercial fit outs that we're doing, you know, 10, 20, $30 million specs on SOM and OMA and Gensler and Kieran Timberlake and all these important architectural projects. We want to be involved on those so that we can have funding to create a business that's sort of the love child between a company like Blue Dot and a company like moi, where we can be in the middle of making a lot of making affordable design that is hopefully made either domestically or with sort of the right kind of craft based manufacturers. And to do it in an unprecedentedly rigorous research based way with the most well versed and talented designers who we can find get to say yes.
- [49:47]
Jeremy Bellotti
And for the vintage part of the business and all of that, I mean, that's a great mission. Is the vintage just there helping to support that business and create some of the cash flow for it as it grows out, or how does that, how does that work?
- [50:04]
David Rosenwasser
David the vintage business is how we continue to engage and learn about design history and how we continue to get better at working with materials. So the vintage business will always be core to how we operate, but it's almost sort of automatic to us because when we go and make videos about new pieces, we're constantly inspired by what we get in. And it's always sort of a surprise and privilege to see the sorts of environments that we're able to get pieces from, whether that be corporate headquarters in New York City or the estate of an amazing Marcel Breuer designed house in Baltimore.
- [50:41]
Yeah, it almost becomes a sort of research arm of the business that informs what we do, but also kind of it's very interesting to us when we get into different meetings. So sometimes we'll kind of have a meeting with a prospective client and, and they're struggling to understand how and why vintage is part of our operation. And we have to sort of explain this to them. But other folks will sort of explain that vintage is part of what we do in addition to new and just this idea that design and manufactured objects and products that we use daily exist in this circular way in our business. That's a lot more intuitive to other folks. And I think it's becoming more intuitive to people that something like furniture should not simply be discarded. We should be thinking about new and Used furniture in the same way. It's all design, it's all hard, solid materials that should be maintained and resold if possible. And my hope is that this idea of circularity in the furniture world just becomes the default because it's always been a no brainer to us and it's just better for everyone.
- [51:56]
Jeremy Bellotti
Why do you think that isn't happening more?
- [51:59]
David Rosenwasser
It may partially be for the same reasons that great design gets value engineered out of a project. It's easier and more profitable to simply buy the new thing that's cheap, that makes whoever, you know, whoever the purchaser is, the most money, as opposed to going through the effort of locating and specifying and perhaps reupholstering or refinishing something or finding someone that does that.
- [52:25]
Yeah, I think as we've gotten more familiar with the sort of top tier of the interior design community, I think my respect has grown quite a lot for the time and care that those interior design firms take in. Sourcing special vintage pieces and investing in it, investing in them, and also reupholstering and refurbishing them. I think also there's a rational business model to help justify all of that. Right. Because there's a more limited base of pieces that can be collected. So it's not so much a commodity, but something that's rare and special. But in the commercial furniture world, we sort of hear a lot of people talking about how, oh, they want to be putting used or vintage pieces into a project, but we always sort of roll our eyes because it never comes to fruition. And I think it's because perhaps clients might be too impatient or clients expect, they expect the circularity narrative or the lead points for something to be used, but they want it to look brand new. And I think a lot of firms just may not realize that companies like ours can actually execute as long as there's some level of flexibility of okay, you need, you need 300 chairs. Well, you're not going to have every chair in the world as an option if you want it to be used or, you know, or vintage. But we have options and we can make something that's, that's compelling. And part of that is because if we think of these large building projects that we're getting pieces from liquidations, the scale of it is pretty remarkable. So we have plenty of dining chairs and coffee tables and sofas that we have in the dozens or hundreds, quantity wise. And that's because they were bought new and often a five or ten year lease comes due and now all of these Pieces are very lightly used, were insanely expensive, and are now a 9 out of 10 and available on the market if someone chose to reuse them for a commercial project.
- [54:30]
Jeremy Bellotti
Do you consider yourselves running a mission driven business or a mission focused business? Would you say that's an accurate description of how you see yourself?
- [54:43]
David Rosenwasser
I would say yes, absolutely. I mean, from the very beginning, David and I have always been motivated by a passion and a deep and honest appreciation for good design and a kind of trust that design can actually bring value to the world and to people.
- [55:02]
Jeremy Bellotti
Because it seems like so much of. And again, part of why the vintage is so important is teaching about the history, teaching about the attention to detail, the care, the choices. I was watching one of your videos. It was a wooden screw stool, I think it was, and it was so beautifully constructed in the detail. And I saw one of the comments, somebody said, oh, why wouldn't you just do this in metal? You'd be so much better. And this, that and the other. And it was in direct contrast to exactly what you were explaining about what made the piece so special. So it seems like it's going to design school through this vast vintage collection and learning from all of these great.
- [55:44]
David Rosenwasser
Designers is that, yeah, I think we're huge advocates for and fans of total design as a sort of philosophy. And we're also, you know, hoping that as our business grows or that as time goes by, we form a community of people who we get to work with as collaborators and people who then become our clients or designers we work with who have that same passion. Right. Business of Home is another example of whether you all consider yourselves mission driven or not, you're inherently educating people about the greater design community. I've learned so much about the interiors world that was so confusing to me through your podcast. We want people to learn about design, history, furniture, accessible furniture design through our kind of platform. And we're hoping that people will come along for the ride and support us so that 50 years from now, we're helping their friends and colleagues introduce and manufacture phenomenal new pieces. But without a private Equity Group investing $50 million in our business, which we don't want someone, you know, breathing down our neck and telling us where to and not to invest for, you know, shareholders and all this, we want that business to grow naturally. And, yeah, we'd love everyone's help to try and make that happen.
- [57:03]
Jeremy Bellotti
Gentlemen, what a pleasure to spend time with you both. I'm thrilled to get to talk with you and also to hear about this, this mission of yours. So thank you both for your time.
- [57:13]
David Rosenwasser
Thanks Dennis. Appreciate it very much.
- [57:15]
Yeah, Dennis, it was a real treat and an honor. Appreciate it.
- [57:21]
Dennis Scully
Thanks for listening. If you'd like to keep up with the latest design industry news, visit us online@businessofhome.com where you can sign up for our newsletter, browse job listings, and join our BOH Insider community for access to online workshops, a free print subscription, and much more. If you have a note for the podcast, drop us a line@podcastbusinessofhome.com if you're enjoying these conversations, please leave us a review on Apple Podcasts. It helps others to discover the show. This show was produced by Fred Nicholas and edited by Michael Castaneda. I'm Dennis Scully. Thanks again for listening and I'll see you next week.