It's hard to talk family at Datamax without mentioning being a family-owned business.
Founded in 1955 as A.B. Dick Products of St. Louis, the family-owned company established its presence as a leader in the mimeograph and offset press markets.
Between 1955 and 1979, under the leadership of Bud Sumner, the St. Louis A.B. Dick distributor grew 15-fold, fueled by both increasingly accessible technology and the company’s strong partnerships with leading equipment brands. The company expanded into the emerging reprographics arena with the introduction of electrostatic technology in 1960 – what became known as the copier industry.
By 1975, Datamax launched its leasing division, enabling the company to provide convenience and flexibility through single-source financial services.
Datamax being family-owned has real advantages for all of us. Here’s 7 of them:
1. Speed of Decision Making.
Without a bundle of red tape and corporate bureaucracy to sift through, local decision making can be recognized reality within a family-owned organization.
This benefits employees, and it certainly benefits customers who want fast resolution to their sales and service needs. Having a shared vision and trust allows team members to go ahead with ideas to supervisors, without fear that they’ll stall out up the corporate ladder.
2. Communication, Communication.
When a workplace feels more like a family than a corporate cubicle space, communication is just more comfortable. A variety of initiatives, from the Mutual Commitment Process, to Business Plan Meetings that welcome employee input, to this Rave Review, employees feel like communication across the board matters.
3. Employee Tenure and Expertise.
The longevity of tenure from those within our organization speaks for itself. Given the energy to promote from within, employees here stay 10, 20, 30 EVEN 40 years because they’ve found a place that values their well-being and certainly those of their customers.
There's a definitive investment, also, in developing expertise, from sales development skills to advanced manufacturer training for service technicians.
4. Easy Leasing.
When the same company that you acquire your technology solution from, is the same company that services it, and is the same company that holds your lease, it can make for a mutually empowered business relationship built on trust and full accountability.
In short, the buck stops with us.
5. Operational Familiarity and Consistency
Process fluidity helps everything run smoother. Being a family-owned business since 1955, we've been doing this for so long, our people know what to do, how to do it, and how, if necessary, it might be improved moving forward.
6. No Undo Pressure from Outside Investors.
Certainly, every owner of every company wants to make money. However, unlike publicly-traded companies, we don't feel the same "outside" investor pressure coming from multiple directions.
7. Stable Values and Culture.
Everyone wants to work for a company they can trust. A company with a family-first culture will, generally, produce less turnover, put its employee well-being at the top of its to-do list, and have employees who genuinely care.
At Datamax, as President Barry Simon says, culture trumps everything. This is evidenced by the care and concern for employees throughout the recent pandemic, the variety of benefits and health initiatives, and the “open-door” policy shared by managers at executives.
