People Profiles
Lee Smith, Principal - Webmart London
At Work
I help clients get the most out of their ever-shrinking budgets, whilst working with great suppliers that help me achieve the crazy lead times. I specialise in retail POS, outdoor media and sheetfed printing and in helping my web offset and gravure specialist colleagues with printing stuff out of their comfort zone. I left school and went straight into a planning / plate-making apprenticeship. It was the only trade for me, as my mate's dad was a printer and had a Ford Escort cabriolet, which for a 15 year old Essex boy in 1988 was life's only ambition. I like to think I work with a smile on my face. Life's too short for stress and if you can't have a laugh at work, you are clearly in the wrong job!
I'm now heading-up the London office and really enjoying the buzz that being back in the capital brings, especially after a 10 year break out in the sticks.
At Play
I Love spending time with my 2 daughters (and the missus of course). When the hectic schedule of dropping them off at various activities, parties and school events allows me to, I enjoy playing tennis and have become quite obsessive and compulsive about improving ever since I first decided to give it a go a couple of years ago. I gave up football at 27, when my first daughter came along and it was clear from my increasing waistline after 5 years of fatherhood that I needed to get back into sport. It was either tennis or golf and lets face it, golf's bloody expensive! Whoever built up a good sweat walking round carrying a stick? I now compete regularly in club competitions and am delighted to have a local club that's friendly and completely the opposite of the Cliff Richardy, snooty, elitist tennis stereotype portrayed in England (they don't even tell me off for swearing at myself on court!). You may have also noticed a selection of my trainer collection in the pic. I don't do smart work shoes but that compulsive devil on my shoulder keeps making me buy trainers. It's my only vice! I think this comes from a childhood of having to make the Tesco 5 quid specials last 2 years whilst my friends had the latest Diadora Borg's!