design director of RE:find
“We see this potential, and that’s what kind of really keeps us going,” Jon Clark says as he explains his high-end furniture store and collection of art galleries, RE:find. Twenty years ago Clark’s store resided in the Southside of Bethlehem and later morphed into a store in Easton. Seven years ago, Clark and Ron Susser opened a store in Allentown and never looked back, and don’t plan to. “If we would have come 10 years ago, we would have been challenged, I wanted to open a business here a number of years ago, and at the time, it didn’t make sense.” With the rapid change to Allentown’s downtown, like the addition of the PPL center and other big businesses, Clark considers RE:find’s fit in the city. “We started out on Seventh Street, and moved around the corner to Hamilton Street about three years ago.” Now, RE:find sits in the heart of the Neighborhood Improvement Zone (NIZ). “There are a lot of people who work in these big buildings down here who are increasingly out onto the street and looking for things.” Because of the nature of Clark’s niche store, this shift in Allentown’s Hamilton district adds clientele. Just as RE:find blends contemporary and antique designs, Allentown serves as a vibrant location for the store and galleries. “We live here, we work here, and we think [Allentown] is a big, diverse, and interesting city.”
Interview by Carly Giacoio ’22
