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By JUSTIN PEEPER
In 1986, Paul and Lu Reiff bought General Manufacturing and moved it to Bluffton, but they didn’t relocate their business — which today is a global lighting leader — to a place you might suspect.
The company’s production facility was the Reiff’s barn; the office was the Reiff’s laundry room; and Paul Reiff’s personal office was his kitchen table.
“Many of our customers would hear the rumble of a dryer or washer as Lu answered the phone to take sales calls,” Reiff said. “And I had to move my office each night when it came dinner time.”
Today, however, the Reiff’s business has outgrown the kitchen table. In fact, General Manufacturing now occupies about 40,000 square feet in three separate Bluffton facilities.
It has grown from two employees to more than 60, with a payroll in excess of $1.25 million. Its volume has increased by 650 times from what it was when the Reiffs bought General Manufacturing in 1986.
“Paul and Lu Reiff have demonstrated that, with hard work and frugality, the American Dream is still alive,” said Howard Rich in January when he honored General Manufacturing as the 2008 Wells County Outstanding Business of the Year.
In front of more than 220 Wells County Chamber of Commerce members, business representatives and guests, Rich presented the Reiffs with a special plaque to commemorate the outstanding business recognition.
“All of us at General Manufacturing are truly blessed and honored to receive the 2008 business of the year award,” Paul Reiff said. “We are proud and honored to join the impressive list of companies who have been given this award.”
Reiff praised his wife Lu for her support over the years and also recognized all of his employees for making the company what it is today.
The Bluffton business produces fluorescent work lights, lights on retractable reels, backlight, explosion-proof lights, leak detection systems, string lights and much more to customers here and across the nation and globe.
Their lights have been used in space; in Saddam Hussein’s palaces after U.S. troops invaded Iraq; in tents; in San Diego sewers; and almost everywhere in-between.
Unlike in 1986 when the company just sold three products, the Bluffton business now markets 158 products with 1,500 variations serving the automotive aftermarket and airline industries, military, industrial market and original equipment manufacturing businesses.
General Manufacturing’s customers include Sears, Boeing, Firestone, Cessna, Wal-Mart, MSC, McMaster Carr, Midas, Hitachi, Navistar and many more.
“Every day brings a new opportunity because we are willing to innovate and answer customers’ needs,” Reiff said.
Reiff challenged all manufactures in Wells County and across the nation to innovate and work extra hard to meet customers’ needs in order to keep manufacturing jobs in the United States.
“We must never let the United States become a service society,” he said. “William Arthur Ward said it very well: ‘If you can imagine it, you can achieve it; if you dream it, you can be it.’”
“I believe this is a challenge to our future generations ... if we are going to maintain manufacturing in the United States.”
Company history
Reiff’s roots in the community date back to 1982 when he moved to Bluffton with the Blount Corporation. After 31⁄2 years in Bluffton, however, the company had a major cut back in employees.
Reiff found General Manufacturing, which had been in business since 1962 but never had grown beyond one employee and three products.
The company was the first business to offer portable fluorescent lighting to the automotive aftermarket.
He and his wife Lu were the only two employees at the time and began the company with just three products: three variations of a 15-watt light.
Soon after Reiff bought the business, he began designing new products in a effort to build a customer base.
One year later, in 1987, General Manufacturing designed and built the Stubby light — a fluorescent hand-held work light that set the standard for the industry.
“When we introduced that thing, I couldn’t get off the phone,” Reiff said.
“We were so strong in that renovation of the industry in work lights that it became a standard in the industry. We have to constantly monitor our competitors because they try to call their light the Stubby.”
Still today, 21 years later, the company sells thousands of Stubby and Stubby II lights, registered trademarks of General Manufacturing.
During the second year of his business, he also built 34,000 lights for Chrysler and shipped them across the United States, Canada and Mexico — a move that would eventually allow Reiff to buy his first facility.
As the company grew in product over the years, it also began making larger fluorescent lights and expanded into other variations.
In 1989, after working out of his barn for three years, Reiff bought his first plant at 1100 S. Morgan St., a 15,000 square foot facility.
With a bigger location came expansion. Soon afterward, the company began producing explosion-proof lights.
In the late 1990s, the company introduced new larger industrial lights and began supplying products to the military and aircraft businesses.
One of the company’s biggest customers at the moment is the military. General Manufacturing has supplied the U.S. military, NATO forces, the Royal Air Force and others with lights.
“We have seen our lights in Baghdad when the U.S. troops took over Saddam’s palaces (in the spring of 2003),” Reiff said. “They set up a logistics center in one and on ‘Good Morning America’ one day I saw our lights hanging all over in this logistics center in this beautiful palace.”
Recently, the company received an order for 4,500 big lights from Homeland Security.
But the company also supplies lights to other industries, including agriculture.
Growing company
Over the years, Reiff’s business has grown from one facility to three. In addition to the S. Morgan Street facility, another 15,000 square feet are in the Bond Street location near the former Sterling Casting plant. The Bond Street operation was added about eight years ago.
In 2004, Reiff added a 8,000 square-foot operation on W. Lancaster Street.
The company’s workforce has also expanded over the years, growing from just Reiff and his wife Lu in 1986 to 63 full- and part-time employees with a payroll in excess of $1.25 million.
The company plans to eventually combine all three plants into one facility.
Several years ago in the 1990s Reiff bought 32 acres of land from the late Claude Decker in the industrial park area next to the Sheriff’s Department and jail.
Plans have already been drawn for a plant that would combine all three operations, but Reiff says no dates have been set yet to begin construction. In fact, Reiff himself may not carry out the plans as he approaches retirement, but his children likely will.
Reiff’s son, Matt, is vice president of manufacturing, and his daughter Sarah (Meister) is vice president of finance; both are also members of the board of directors.
Matt and Sarah are expected to take over the company after Reiff and his wife retire.
Reiff also employs other family members, including his nephew David Reiff III, who is the company’s national sales manager. Some of his 11 grandchildren also work part time.
Family business,
family values
Family values have always been important to Reiff, and he and his wife have a strong loyalty to their employees.
“We have very strong loyalty in our employees, but we try very hard to be a family business,” Reiff said. “I go over what I call ‘Reiff’s Rules’ with new employees. I tell them I hope you feel as strongly about your family as I do about mine.”
Many of Reiff’s employees are working moms, and he tailors his programs to meet their needs so they can be home when their children get off the bus. He also makes every effort to accommodate employees when school is closed and they have to be home with their children.
“He takes great pride in seeing the employees of General Manufacturing as part of his extended family,” Rich said.
Reiff is a graduate of Benton Harbor High School in Benton Harbor, Mich. He earned a bachelor’s degree in agricultural mechanics at Michigan State University.
Prior to establishing his own firm, Reiff was director of sales and marketing for Blount Agri/Industrial Division in Bluffton from 1983 to 1986.
Before coming to Bluffton, Reiff was national sales manager for FMC Corp., Agricultural Machinery Division, Minden, La., from 1981 to 1983. He also served as vice president of sales for Irrifrance, U.S.A. Division Agribusiness International from 1979 to 1981. His employment in agribusiness both in sales and engineering dates back to 1959.
In addition to his two children who work for General Manufacturing, he also has another son, Park Reiff, who works as an electrical engineer with ITT Aerospace.
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