Tony Revier recently commemorated his 34th year at Uyemura, most recently as its President and CEO.
He is a past president of the Metal Finishers Suppliers Association (MFSA) and served on the National Association of Metal Finishers (NAMF) and MFSA boards. Revier was an integral part of the team that negotiated the creation of the National Association for Surface Finishing (NASF), is a past president of the NASF, and has served on the NASF Board.
Revier continues to chair the NASF Awards Committee that are handed out each year at SUR/FIN. He received the 2004 NASF August P. Munning Award and in 2016 was named a NASF Fellow.
What is your company’s best-kept secret?
Very clear: it’s technology. Technologically advanced product offerings. Without question, from our very beginning, technology has been the key to our success and growth. Our strategy is — and has remained — to offer better technology for the challenges that our customers are facing on a daily basis.
How do you inspire your team?
We focus on continuing to develop and enhance our company culture. That’s our driving force: making people feel they’re integral to that culture. We don’t lose many people; 20 and 25 years of service is the norm at Uyemura, not the exception. Even now.
What is your favorite aspect of your work?
Working with customers to develop new technologies. Customers actively participate with us in creating process advancements. With our ENIG product line, for example, we’re on version 8 or 9 of that, where competitors are still out there with their original chemistry. Our R&D team is driven by customers’ demands for more rigorous performance: as their technology evolves, so must ours alongside it.
What traits do you most admire in friends and colleagues?
Persistence, tenacity, and a willingness to stay with a task and not be derailed by obstacles.
What was your favorite course in college?
Probably drafting. For a while, I pursued an engineering degree, and advanced drafting was part of that. You have to be fairly creative with orthographic projections and ways to model things that take drafting to a new level. Of course, this was pre-AutoCAD, when we had drafting boards.
What’s the most interesting place you’ve visited?
The UAE: Abu Dhabi and Dubai. Abu Dhabi is all about oil and very conservative, while Dubai has more glitz and is interested in advancing tourism — and recently “medical tourism.”
What makes UAE special?
We’ve now been to the UAE several times, and an important part of these visits is the trips with the president of the University of La Verne to numerous universities in Abu Dhabi and Dubai in an effort to establish a collaboration between the University of La Verne, my alma mater, and these various institutions.
How has your long association with La Verne affected your thought processes?
One aspect is the importance of working with interns and nurturing the next generation of professionals like we’ve done here at our UIC headquarters in California.
If you could fully fund one charity, which would you choose?
American Cancer Society, in remembrance of many friends and associates who have passed away.
What’s the best advice you’ve ever received?
Years ago, when first out of the Navy, working in Henderson, Kentucky, as chief chemist, while traveling with one of our salesmen. He told me to never forget that it is always about the fact that “people sell to people.”
What is your next vacation destination?
Hawaii’s Hanalei Bay, on the island of Kauai.
What’s the most interesting book you’ve read recently?
It’s an audiobook by Hal Elrod called Miracle Morning.
Given your extensive travels in Asia and the Middle East, what unusual food would you like to have again?
Unagi donburi; freshwater eel on rice.
What is your proudest achievement?
Nurturing and growing Uyemura for 34 years and counting. And I have to mention my wife, Mary Anne, and I are celebrating our 55th wedding anniversary this past year.
Where do you see yourself in five years?
I have a terrific 3-year agreement that allows me to focus exclusively on primary accounts and international relations. I’ll also continue work on the industry’s government affairs committee. NASF and IPC government relations have long been a key priority for me. Just last evening, Mary Anne and I attended a dinner with the president of the University of La Verne; the purpose was to bring on a new trustee, specifically to manage government affairs. You can’t overstate the importance of having a strong ongoing presence in Washington D.C. to fully understand how regulations – current and proposed — impact our industry.
What is your favorite holiday?
Halloween.
If you could go back in time and change one thing, what would it be?
An odd technicality prevented me from attending Naval Officer’s Candidate School, which I had competed for and been selected for. My original ambition was to be a Navy pilot.
Who would you want to play you in a movie of your life?
That’s easy: Tom Selleck.
If you could go back in time, what year would you travel to?
1976 when I moved my family to California from Chicago, starting another new chapter in our many life experiences.
What’s your favorite family tradition?
Thanksgiving.
