The Day We Met Our Biggest Fan

Watch a video on the amazing gift Anthony created for the Ray White family.

You’d be hard pressed to find someone more enamored with the Ray White brand than 12-year-old Anthony Ravasini.

He has many thick card-holders worth of Ray White business cards, knows the names of our principals, offices and agents far and wide and visits every office in every town and suburb he passes through.

Anthony suffers from autism and since the age of two he has had a fascination with the Ray White brand.

“He would take the Ray White page out of the local paper each week and would carry it around with him until it was all tattered,” his father Jason says.

“My wife and I would think this was strange and to this day we don’t know why he likes Ray White so much because he doesn’t do this for any other real estate brand.”

As he got older, if they drove past a Ray White office they would have to stop to collect some business cards.

“Because Anthony was totally non-verbal it was rare for him to make any attempt to communicate with us but drive past a Ray White office and he would light up and try his hardest to communicate.”

At around age five, although Anthony could not communicate he soon became very good at using his iPad. He didn’t use all the expensive apps his parents had downloaded, instead he would spend hours looking up Ray White offices and then finding them on google maps.

“He would then print them out and give them to us. In other words saying he wanted business cards from all the offices he had listed. He became so good at this that he knows every Ray White office in Australia and who works there,” Jason said.

“Once we went to Bathurst (NSW) for the weekend and Anthony had gestured to us that there was a Ray White office nearby. So he directed us to the office because his mapping skills are totally unbelievable. Once we arrived we got the normal handful of business cards but afterwards Anthony got quite upset and was pointing in a different direction.”

“We had no idea what he wanted but he kept saying his version of Ray White “yay yight”. I said to him that he already had Ray White cards but he just started crying and pointing so we drove off in the direction he wanted us to go. A few streets later he started smiling and as we came around the corner here it was another Ray White office.”

“We have even been away on holidays and no matter where we go the Ray White business cards have become a bit of a ritual. For us it never gets any easier walking in to an office and then having to explain our story but to the credit of your staff they have always been more than accommodating and sometimes give Anthony much more than just business cards. Over the years he has been given everything from pens to t-shirts.”

For Anthony’s 9th birthday they had a party at his school and his parents made him a Ray White business card piñata.

Anthony’s favourite office is Ray White North Ryde, where principal David Jarvis is a akin to a celebrity to him, but he has visited offices in Melbourne. Auckland, south east Queensland and all over New South Wales.

He loves altering Ray White team photographs and replacing Ray White staff with his face (as the principal of course) and his friends’ faces on the bodies of agents and property managers. Not surprisingly, during a career day at school, he recently declared his ambition to run a Ray White office.

Jason has decided to write a book about Anthony’s story so that it can hopefully help other families going through the same thing.

At Ray White corporate, we learned of Anthony’s story in September. In early October, during his school holidays, we invited his family in to meet the team at the Sydney head office.

We filled a Ray White sports bag full of Ray White gadgets (a new Ray White iPad cover,an open-close sign, t-shirt, tie, hat, cup, books etc) plus a plaque declaring Anthony Ravasini to be our newest member, and presented it to Anthony. Suffice to say, Anthony was much more interested in collecting as many Ray White business cards from the NSW corporate and national marketing teams, as well as Ray White Commercial Leasing Sydney and Ray White Hotels.

Not long after Lara, Anthony’s mum, wrote to us.

“Just wanted to say a huge thank you to you and your team for what you did for Anthony today!,” Lara said.

“Although he was a bit quiet and overwhelmed he absolutely loved it! He has organised all of his cards already. As soon as he got home he put his t-shirt, hat and tie on! He then put the open and closed sign on the front door at home because now apparently our house is a Ray White office! Too funny! He also ripped out the old iPad cover off and put the new one on, and then had a cup of water with his new mug!”

“All of the gifts were really kind and we really appreciate the time that you gave us today because we know that you are all very busy people!”

We look forward to hosting Anthony again soon... and if he pops into your office remember to gather together your business cards!