About Us

Rich Pic Rich Roland, President and CEO of NEO Products, Inc., creating new product design, and production of quality products since 1989.

NEO received multiple grants from the Ben Franklin Partnership & Technology Center, and the Pennsylvania Department of Commerce, in the early 90s for research and development of plastics in stringed instruments. Since then, NEO has brought to market many ingenious stringed instruments.

Roland is an award-winning designer in a wide variety of professional areas including Best Neon Artist in the US 1993 for the Chameleon Guitar and more. He has been a product designer for over 30 years and moved NEO to Wildwood, NJ in 2000. NEO now has offices in Los Angeles where it continues to provide product services for its national client base.

NEO was a Corporate Sponsor and Rich Roland as an individual also supported and helped create the IPD program from the ground floor: Teaching Staff, Advisor, Lecturer, and Program Curriculum Development Consultant, 1990-1996

So, what is IPD?

It is a set of courses that allows students from any college at Lehigh to work with students from other disciplines on a real-world industry sponsored project. Each project team has a faculty adviser and together with an industry mentor, the team follows a proven process that identifies a problem, formulates it into a business opportunity, encourages wild ideas to generate innovative solutions, provides the resources to fabricate, build and test the best solution for technical, social, economic and personal relevance and value. Undergraduates can spend two or three semesters on this project and this experience can be continued into a Master of Engineering in IPD.

The IPD program was started in 1990 as a result of a meeting at Lehigh of industrial leaders gathered to help and advise the Mechanical Engineering and Mechanics faculty on how to improve the quality of our graduates who plan to work in industry.
In 1994 we launched our pilot which in 1996 received the American Society of Mechanical Engineers Curriculum Innovation Award.
From 1996 to 2001 the program received several large grants from alumni, foundations, state and local government for the development of infrastructure to support real-world, industry-sponsored projects.
From its beginnings in 1990 IPD has grown to include over 300 students from fourteen majors work in 50 teams each academic year.

A little Family History and Background:

I grew up reading Women’s Wear Daily and in the rag business in Miami Fla. My Father’s mother was a model back in 1918, and one of the best seamstresses in Philadelphia at the time. Gram was floor manager in garment factories long before equal rights.

My father Seth, was a pattern maker and production manager for men’s suits and women’s wear. Here’s a photo of my mother, Fran on the roof of Lane Bryant, NYC in her early 20s when she was Head of Fashion Design and illustration.

In the 60s Fran invented the Tulip sleeve, and Bubble sleeves. Dad was making Spaghetti belts, Ranch Mink and Polka Dotted Bikinis and I had lots of girl friends.

Fran was the American designer for Nino Cerruti and designed Arnold Palmer’s clothing line plus all the sports wear worn by Jimmy Conners, during his winning career, as Head Designer for Robert Bruce, PA. Yes, Jimmy made more money with endorsements than playing tennis and dressed right.


	My Studio by the Sea, Wildwood, NJ USA