|
If the
domain world had a First Family, the Neus - Howard,
Barbara and Ray - would have a
legitimate claim to the title. When Howard co-founded
the world's first domain conference with Rick
Schwartz back in 2004 (The inaugural
TRAFFIC event in Delray Beach, Florida),
Howard's wife Barbara and son Ray (an 18-year-old
college student at the time) played integral roles in
making the historic show a success.
After
TRAFFIC's 10-year run, the Neus staged THE Domain
Conference in Fort Lauderdale in 2015
and again in 2016.
The next year, Howard and Barbara shifted to
supporting roles while Ray joined industry veteran Jothan
Frakes to found the MERGE! conference that
was held in Orlando in 2017
and 2018
|
Howard, Ray and Barbara Dillman Neu
|
Ray
grew up idolizing Howard, an extraordinarily
multi-talented man who passed in 2024.
Ray, in turn, has proven to be cut from the same
cloth. He was a
college basketball player at Florida Atlantic, adomain
investor and conference founder, a Broward County Deputy
Sheriff and he has been a commercial airline
pilot for JetBlue for the past three and a
half years. All of that and he is still just getting
started.
Last year Ray
harnessed the power of artificial intelligence
and a category defining domain name - LabSupplies.com
- to co-found a new business with Barbara that has
exploded like a shot out of a cannon. The company's
latest coup was becoming an authorized dealer for
international healthcare giant McKesson,
a company whose revenue topped $403 billion in their
last fiscal year. For Ray and
Barbara, the most gratifying part of their new enterprise
is that even though Howard is no longer with them, he
played an instrumental role in making it
happen.
|
"My dad bought LabSupplies.com in the live domain auction
at the TRAFFIC 2008 conference at Disney World in
Orlando," Ray told us. "Like the Magic Kingdom itself,
that
conference was magical! Some of my favorite
memories from adult life was going into the park with
my parents and friends including Ron, Diana and
Brittany Jackson, Chris Hartnett and Rob Grant, along
with his family. Perhaps that is the reason there
appears to be some "pixie dust" on
this project!" As you will learn in the
course of this story, the Neu's love for all things Disney helped transform
the LabSupplies.com
domain name into a rapidly growing business. |
|
While LabSupplies.com
stood out, it wasn't the only name in Howard's collection that Ray
was well aware of. "My Dad’s portfolio of names is
something that we always shared. I knew every
name
he had and always assisted on his various projects as
best as I could. After losing him it just transitioned
to assisting my mother in managing them"
LabSupplies.com and MalpracticeAttorneys.com were
two of Howard's favorites and the two that Ray most
wanted to build out to honor his Dad. "Together,
we got it done on MalpracticeAttorneys.com," Ray
noted. "It did wonderful things for our clients,
and my Dad, who was an attorney, did an amazing job of
getting them the help they needed."
While
LabSupplies.com caught fire fairly soon after it was
founded, there were some missteps early on. Ray
told us, "We
originally started working on LabSupplies.com in
August 2024, six months after my dad passed, during a period when
my mom and I were
mourning — which we still are and, really, always
will be. At the time, I had a hard-to-read,
beehive-looking logo and I assumed people would buy
simply because I had some items listed. Obviously,
with no SEO and a sloppy-looking website, that
didn’t happen. On the
other hand it was funny that a few suppliers didn’t
think we were real because the domain name
was “too good" to belong to a site that
bad! Fortunately, we do not have that problem now.
Everyone we email or reach out to sees us as
“real” and I believe that is our domain's
power as a brand."
|
Ray
explained how he was able to reverse course and put
the project on the
right path. "Wanting to push for sales, I did
some research and found Sean
Tan on Fiverr. With his incredible reviews
as an ad marketer, I scheduled a call with him. One
look at the site—with its poor branding and lack of
SEO—and he basically turned me down as a customer.
He explained that the site wasn’t good enough to
produce sales and that he didn’t want me to waste my
money with him when there was no potential for a
return. Because of that, I decided to shelve
LabSupplies.com and focus on other online clothing
projects for a while. It is a story I am so glad to
tell publicly because it highlights what an amazing
and honest business owner he is. Especially in that
industry, many people would have just taken their fee
and kept stringing me along. I owe Sean tremendously;
we have since become great friends, and he is a vital
part of our team."
About a
year later when Ray was visiting his old stomping
grounds in Phoenix (where he trained to be an
airline pilot) he met up with GoDaddy Senior
Marketing Manager Joe
Styler at an In-N-Out Burger. "We
discussed various projects, and I told him the story
of LabSupplies.com |
Marketing
Strategist Sean Tan
UNI Marketing Agency |
|
and Sean. After hearing about the
online clothing projects and weighing them against LabSupplies.com, he correctly advised me to pursue
the LabSupplies.com path. Joe has since become a tremendous
consultant for LabSupplies.com. A book he
recommended to me, This Is Marketing by Seth
Godin, states, “Tall sunflowers have deep and
complex root systems. Without them, they’d never get
very high.” Joe is a tremendous part of the root
system we have built." |
GoDaddy's
Joe Styler speaking at the 2016 edition of THE Domain
Conference
in Fort Lauderdale that was produced by Ray, Howard
and Barbara Neu.
|
"On
the JetBlue flight back to Fort Lauderdale, I was
already working on the new logo," Ray
recalled.
"My mom and I have always loved Walt Disney World
and Disneyland, and our favorite aspect is Main
Street, U.S.A. We wanted the new logo and brand
experience to reflect a store on the “Main Street
of the internet.” That warm, nostalgic feeling
is something we strive to bring to every customer.
Even though we are online, we want you to feel
genuinely welcome the moment you enter our store, just
as you would when being greeted by a shopkeeper.
Whether you are a billion-dollar company, a major
university, or someone just buying a single item from
our home health section, we treat everyone the same.
If you ever walked up to a TRAFFIC registration booth
and met my mom, that is the feeling we try to bring to
this massive industry."
At the
same time Ray and his new consultants were giving
LabSupplies.com a major makeover, artificial
intelligence was making enormous strides forward,
with capabilities ramping up so fast it was hard to
keep up with the dizzying pace of new advances. AI
would prove to be the jet fuel needed to put
LabSupplies.com in orbit. "During
the year it was shelved, Sean and I still kept in
touch," Ray said. After the rebrand, I had him re-inspect
LabSupplies.com, and his exact quote after seeing the
build out was, “Someone found AI!”
|
|
The
story behind the logo: On one of the
family's frequent trips to Disney World,
Ray was attracted to the lettering on the
window of this vintage storefront on Main
Street, U.S.A. It inspired the new Lab
Supplies logo that gives the business an
aura evoking the friendliness and
familiarity of an age old enterprise. |
|
|
While
the project was coming back off the shelf, Jackson
Elsegood showed me several AI tools
and how they could help a Shopify store and we really
started to build out the SEO. I knew very little about
SEO before this iteration; I did not understand meta
titles, H1 and H2 headings, descriptions, keywords, or
how they affect a person searching for a product.
Going from knowing zero to being able to create
a website that generates traffic from search is thanks
to AI," Ray said. |
"As
of this writing, we have more than 55,000 products
listed. If we were listing them one by one, I
would be listing forever—and I would have no
fingerprints left from mouse clicks, no sales, and no
growth. When Claude Sonnet first came out, we
were able to list 300 items a week (waking up
in the middle of the night when usage limits reset),
and I thought that was unbelievably fast compared with
what we had done before. Now, as we expand further
into Claude Code and agents, if we listed only
300 items in an hour, I would think something
was wrong," Ray marveled.
|
Though
he has the category-defining domain, LabSupplies.com
is still a newcomer in a space with many
established competitors. Ray's experience reinforced
something he always believed about great domains.
"The domain is the key to every door we have
opened. If you look at our |
|
brands page, you’ll
see that we are an authorized dealer for McKesson,
one of the largest and most financially valuable
companies in the world—and the people there are
amazing. My mother was actually teary-eyed after our
first meeting because |
|
|
of how wonderful and kind they
were. With that being said, I am very sure McKesson
would not have spent the time or energy on BarbaraAndRaysLabSupplyShop.com.
I describe us as being at the top of the food chain
domain in this space, and people in the industry tend
to agree." |
"Since
I started to go to conference and meetups in the lab
supply industry everyone has been beyond impressed
with the name. I ran out of business cards at an event
(terrible I know from a former show organizer) and
with such a memorable name I still received
emails from those I met without them. Going to events
was a huge step for us and frankly I was nervous as I
had never been to a non internet business convention,
but with the name and decades worth of conference
experience it has been a vital tool to our growth.
Having shook the hands of people you do business with
is important to us; something the original TRAFFIC
shows taught us."
Now
that LabSupplies.com has their flag firmly planted in
their industry, Ray and Barbara have a singular focus
going forward. “Better every day” is our
only focus," Ray declared. "If we improve a little every day—365
times a year—we believe the results compound into
something extraordinary. We genuinely care about our
customers, and staying lean allows us to keep their
costs down. At the heart of it, I believe that
every dollar we help a lab save can go toward more
supplies, more research, and more discovery. If we can
play even a small part in helping that happen, then
we’re helping make the world a better place."
|
Over
the past year, domain industry pioneer Rick
Schwartz has been combining great domains with
AI-adroit developers on a previously unseen scale with
his Beanstalk
Challenge initiative. This is prompting a
widespread interest in the idea of moving beyond
developing a single business to creating multiple
ones at once utilizing AI agents. Given his
experience developing LabSupplies.com we asked Ray his
thoughts about tackling more than one project of
this size at a time, even with agents at one's
disposal.
"I
mentioned the “top of the food chain” earlier, and
Rick is truly a top-of-the-food-chain man and has
been an inspiration to me since I was 18 years
old," Ray said. "For many macro reasons, I
would not be doing this today without him. And for one
micro reason, I asked him before starting the re-brand
whether this project could be fruitful. Rick, always
so honest and gracious (and usually correct), simply
responded, “Yes” and that is all I need to
hear."
Ray
added, "Rick and the Beanstalk Challenge are
showing the power available to us now. Still,
each project in the challenge has a human behind
it. With the power of AI and a human to harness it, we
can see the results. AI is very similar to an airliner
with autopilot: it still requires tremendous skill
and knowledge to operate. People who think you can
just prompt an AI bot to build and run your
business—and that it simply happens—clearly know
nothing about AI. A lot of it comes down to how much
time, energy, and focus you’re able to dedicate to
each project. Rick and the Beanstalk are proving that
right now."
|
Domain
King Rick Schwartz
Beanstalk Challenge Founder |
"I’ve
also found that working on other projects can
actually make your main project better. A side
project can become a place to experiment with a new
design, test an idea, or try a different approach
without disrupting the core business. Some of those
experiments eventually grow alongside the main
project, while others teach you something that you can
bring back to it."
By
becoming a full time airline pilot and a domain
investor/developer/entrepreneur, Ray is doing the things he
always dreamed of doing. They say "if you do what
you love, you will never work a day in your life"
but
that is still a pretty full plate. On the other hand,
given that one can work on domains and websites
anywhere in the world and at any time you want, those
two pursuits would also seem to be a near perfect fit.
Ray
in the cockpit to pilot another JetBlue flight
Ray
concurred, noting "Our great friend Bob Olea
is a tremendous example of airline pilot and domain
investor success. It is an incredibly challenging and
rewarding career, and one I am truly honored to be in;
it is the perfect job for me. I am never bored
anywhere or on any long layover. I thrive online, and
because my schedule consists mainly of weekends (due
to seniority), I am off almost every weekday—or most
of the week—which leaves me available for meetings
and support with LabSupplies.com."
"Building
this project with my mom as the owner,
and continuing a legacy we had planned to build
with my dad, is a tremendous honor for us.
Taking a name he owned—one we had spoken about
building out—and running with it is a joy every
day. Our About
Us page at LabSupplies.com features some of our favorite
photos of him and of us. I look at it every day and
smile; this project is truly from our hearts."
|
