CyberVillage SpotLight on Business: Neil Reich

Sometimes the key to success is simply possessing the ability to read the signs all around you. Neil Reich, owner and founder, Reich Supply, has an innate ability to sense business environments and adjust to compensate. He also has the ability to quickly embrace new technology, leverage his time and pick a strong team. One of the best examples of the ability to leverage his time is when he was young boy of thirteen. Neil had a newspaper route in Utica and leveraged the time while he was delivering the local newspaper to offer other newspapers. He took the simple newspaper route and turned it into a newspaper distribution company. He charged existing customers an additional fee to get the other newspapers to generate additional revenue.


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Neil was immersed in the business world his entire life. His father, Jerome (Jerry) Reich, fresh out of WWII went to a neon sign making class and later founded his business making neon signs. He owned, managed and sold for his own firm for most of life after the Army. Jerry took a class which taught making of neon signs and leveraged it into his own business. Later, Jerry and Neil embraced a new technology to produce signs using an automated cutting device, and early computer/robot, to reduce cost, and slowly, through time, reduce necessary personnel. This early version of robotics would eventually revolutionize the sign making industry. Neil attributes his current degree of success to effectively leveraging time, building on existing client base, embracing technology before competitors and a loyal people. Most recently, the previously renamed Reich Supply, began wholesaling a product line based on a new technology called sublimation. This is a process through which people who produce marketing material, and even signs, like branded business mugs, T-Shirts, and more, at a fraction of the cost associated with screen printing and other soon-to-be outdated processes.

Neil grew his company over decades from zero to over 13,000 square feet in a building near the corner of Oxford Road and Genesee Street. Neil says his employees have been with him a long time - Twenty plus years in many cases and he gives a lot of credit to his employees for his continued growth.