Long before LabSupplies.com sold a single beaker, the domain itself had to be claimed — and the man who raised his hand at auction to claim it was no ordinary bidder. Howard Neu was a singer, actor, an attorney, a former mayor of North Miami, a campaign manager who once ran Hubert Humphrey's Florida presidential race, and — by the time the domain world found him — one of its most beloved figures.

In 2004, Howard co-founded the T.R.A.F.F.I.C. Conference alongside the "Domain King" Rick Schwartz. The two were famous in the industry for their partnership built on a handshake that endured for more than a decade and helped define the modern domain business itself. As one DN Journal cover story put it, Howard was the leading man — the steady, even-keeled showman who knew how to bring a room together.

He collected names the way old shopkeepers collected good stories: patiently, carefully, with an eye for the ones that mattered. LabSupplies.com was one of those.

The look of LabSupplies.com — the logos, the typography, the warm and slightly old-fashioned welcome of the place — is no accident. Barbara drew her inspiration from Main Street, U.S.A. at Disneyland and Walt Disney World: the turn-of-the-century shopping street where every storefront is a real place, every window tells a story, and the person behind the counter is somebody you can actually talk to.

That's the feeling she wanted online. Not a faceless catalog. Not a mile-long warehouse aisle. A shopkeeper's storefront where owners and decision-makers are reachable, where deals are made in conversation, and where the answer to "who do I talk to?" is always a real person.

To make that possible, Barbara, along with her son Ray Dillman-Neu, have carefully curated a team to handle the things she trusts to specialists — website work, fulfillment, logistics, the technical bones of an online shop — while she personally manages the relationships and the deal-making that have always been at the heart of how the Neu name does business.

Because building a lab from the ground up deserves a true partner, we created LaunchLab — a dedicated program to supply and support startup laboratories, relocations, and grant-funded research. We don't just sit behind a screen in our South Florida headquarters; our team tours facilities, from local hubs to major research centers, to understand the real-world challenges researchers face on the ground.