Reese business is the 'Standard' for plumbing

Richard Reese will always be grateful for the lessons he learned from his father — and for ways he has used those lessons.

Reese, president of Sandy-based Standard Plumbing Supply, began working early — in fact, at age 8, when his father, Dale Reese, started bringing him to his plumbing supply business to help out.

Dale Reese founded Standard Plumbing Supply in 1952 to serve local contractors. Those customers quickly were won over by Standard's self-service model.

Dale Reese developed seven stores, a trucking company and two plumbing-supply plants. Richard Reese took over the stores in 1992, when his father divided Standard into three parts, giving one to each of his three sons.

Richard Reese led Standard into rapid expansion, from 13 stores to 70 in several states. As the company flourished, Richard Reese was able to follow his father's model and expand the company vertically into support fields like real estate (to manage the company's properties), Internet retailing (to give Standard an online presence) and financing (to support the core business).

Eventually, as his brothers sold or otherwise moved out of those sectors, Reese was able to start divisions for trucking and for manufacturing Standard's own lines of supplies.

And he has done it two ways: first, frugally — a piecemeal sorter he bought in parts through classified ads is now the state-of-the-art core of the company's distribution system.

And second, with an eye for the next generation — like Dale Reese, Richard Reese plans someday to pass his business on to his children.