$200M firm co-founder reflects on first 30 years: 'Don’t be afraid to screw up'

It might not make it through the marketing people, but a solid tagline for digital imaging and wide format printing firm S-One Holdings, which celebrated both a longevity and revenue milestone this year, could be “we’re not afraid to screw up.” 

S-One co-founder Art Lambert says precisely that when explaining the Sarasota-based company’s success. The B2B company, which handles product research and development, manufacturing and distribution for digital imaging, design and print professionals and entities, turned 30-years-old in 2024. It will also reach $200 million in annual revenue this year, Lambert says, and had one of its best EBITDA (Earnings Before Interest Taxes, Depreciation and Amortization) years ever.

This all makes S-One, parent of LexJet among several other brands, one of the largest homegrown, privately-held businesses in Sarasota. It has some 225 employees spread over offices in Sarasota, Wisconsin, Barcelona and Brussels and has won multiple best place to work awards in its 30-year history. It also has nine worldwide distribution centers.

 “The key to our success is we are resilient,” says Lambert, pointing out the company overcame the 2008-09 recession and the pandemic, among other obstacles “and we’re not afraid to try new things. And, we're not afraid to screw up.” 

In a recent conversation over lunch, Lambert, 78, detailed some of the leadership must-do's — and don’ts — that have guided he and S-One co-founder Ron Simkins over the last 30 years. “What sets S-One apart is our willingness to take risks, to step into the unknown…the future isn’t something we wait for. It’s something we create,” says Simkins in a statement celebrating the company’s 30-year anniversary. 

Fill a void

One of Lambert’s leadership traits is work ethic. That goes back to when he was growing up, in New Jersey. His dad was a chemist, his mom was a teacher. Simkins’ mom was a teacher, too, which is how they both learned how to hustle. “We didn’t grow up with silver spoons,” Lambert says. “We had to go do things and work if we wanted money.” 

Two phrases Lambert heard often growing up helped shape his leadership style and work ethic. One: if you fall down, get right back up. And two: “My dad was always telling me, ‘don’t be a quitter.’

Simkins and Lambert met 50 years ago, when they lived in the same Cincinnati apartment building. They sold computers, first independently and later for Zenith Data Systems. They also ventured outside the corporate world, including owning a few bars near the University of Cincinnati — neighborhood joints with names like Mash, Fibber Magee's and Dollar Bill's Saloon.

The friends and their families moved to Sarasota in the early 1990s, and sought to start a business in the then-burgeoning digital photography industry. Initially called LexJet, the first iteration of the business was to manufacture signs. But, in trying new things that didn’t work, the founders soon shifted to fill what they believed was a void in customer support and education in how products were sold in the sign and graphics industry. Sarasota Memorial Hospital was one of its first clients. 

Young ones

A leadership lesson Lambert comes back to repeatedly with S-One and in creating a go-to workplace requires knowing when to get out of the way. S-One often boasts on how it has little in the way of corporate hierarchy and titles: the “about us” section on its website has eight senior leaders, not a lot for a company its size. 

“The leadership team is not here to manage people,” Lambert told me nine years ago, when he and Simkins were named the Business Observer’s 2015 Top Entrepreneurs. “They manage the business.”

The company also has some impressive employee longevity numbers. Data includes: an average tenure of 9.5 years; nearly half the employees have been with the firm for over five years; and 19.5% have been there 15 years. More than half its workforce is between the ages of 25 and 44, according to an S-One culture guidebook, and 23% are between 18 and 24. 

In the glossy culture book, titled “30 Years of Making Waves”, several employees commented on the leadership culture being a magnet to work there. “I’ve had the opportunity to learn different areas of the business outside of IT, like accounting, sales and supply chain,” S-One Vice President of IT Janelle Piersoll says in the book. “This experience empowered my abilities as a leader.”

More than autonomy, Lambert says good leaders push employees to be better and accountable. “You don’t stay somewhere,” he says, “if you are not happy and you are not challenged.”

Another aspect of accountable leadership, Lambert has learned, is guarding against the impact low-performing employees can have on others. “The worst thing you could do to a good person,” he says, “is tolerate a bad one.”

As such, the company uses a pod system for some of its sales workforce, where individuals in pods compete against each other, and other pods. Lambert learned the pod system in the workplace from pro golfer and Sarasota resident Paul Azinger, who wrote the book “Cracking the Code” in 2010. The book is a play-by-play of how Azinger led a 12-man U.S. team to victory in the 2008 Ryder Cup. Azinger's key move: He broke the golfers into pods of four to get Type-A individuals to play cohesively — a play off a Navy SEALs training technique. 

Be bold

As far as that don’t be afraid to screw up mantra, Lambert says that applies to the top people at S-One, too, in a lead-by-doing kind of way. 

One example of don’t be afraid: the company’s costly and short-lived effort to get into the consumer space. “We learned you have to have really deep pockets to get into that,” he says. “We had something we thought was really good. But we couldn’t spend that much.” 

The upside to that setback? The effort led S-One to build out and improve its business-to-business e-commerce platforms. 

Another example: S-One earned a major, multiyear printing contract for a global corporation about a decade ago. S-One made a big multimillion-dollar investment in the opportunity — too big by about 30% it turns out, which actually cost the company a few million dollars the first year. The lesson, says Lambert: “Don’t be afraid” to do big things, but “do your due diligence.”