Pressing the Reset Button: An Interview with the Founder

It’s easy to think of a transition from one brand identity to another as just a matter of marketing. But for the people involved behind the scenes, especially for independent companies launched on a heartfelt mission, it is far more than that.

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For Francois Lebled, founder of Lebled Soloviev Editions, the rebranding of his publishing house from New Heroes and Pioneers to Lebled Soloviev is a profound act of maturation and a tribute to the lineage that shaped him and the future still to come. Francois is a man who has moved through the hipster energy of a startup into the quiet, uncompromising sophistication of a global artistic enterprise. The change of name represents a reset — a moment to step out from behind a tribute and into a legacy. Soloviev is his husband’s name and a mark of ongoing attachment into a stable future.

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It’s clear that while the name on the spine is changing, the soul of the work remains anchored in his lifelong obsession with art and beauty.

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The story of New Heroes and Pioneers began on a beach in Nice in 2012. Francois was at a crossroads, looking for a creative new opportunity after years in the corporate marketing world. Lamenting to his husband that his perfect job didn’t exist, that conversation lit the necessary spark.

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"He told me, ‘Stop complaining and just create your own job,’" Francois recalls. On that afternoon, sitting by the Mediterranean, the two sketched out a business plan on his phone. It was an ambitious vision for a boutique publishing house that would treat books not just as vessels for information, but as art objects.

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New Heroes and Pioneers was born — a name chosen as a tribute to a dear friend who had passed away. It was a beautiful sentiment that fueled the company’s first chapter, but as the brand has grown up, along with Francois himself, he felt the need for a name that spoke to his own history and the future he wanted to build.

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He describes a childhood balanced between two distinct, powerful influences. His mother was a woman of impeccable taste who viewed style as a necessary way of being. In his boyhood eyes, she was impossibly chic, the "Jackie O of Paris." From her, Francois inherited an eye for design and a refusal to settle for anything less than elegance.

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His father, meanwhile, provided further intellectual and emotional weight. A collector of music and literature, his father’s study was a sanctuary of thousands of LPs, floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, and stacks of magazines in the garden house.

"When it comes to print material, he never threw anything away," Francois says. "He had this deep, visceral connection to the page." This carries on in the very DNA of the Lebled Soloviev motto: "For the love of print." It isn’t just a catchy tagline; it’s a family inheritance.

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The decision to rebrand was accelerated by the quiet reflections brought on by the death of his father. Francois found himself walking through bookstores — the very places his father had loved — and remembering childhood Saturday visits.

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"To have his name in the store — on a product that was sold in his favorite store!" he exclaims. This nod to his heritage is the symbolic founding of a legacy that, in truth, began many decades ago at the dinner table where they spoke of art, music, and theater when he was a child.

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“His passion became my passion, and now it can leave a legacy,” he explains, signaling a shift toward a more personal and permanent era. Francois describes the transition as "pressing the reset button," moving away from the original brown-paper, craft-aesthetic toward something more "museum-quality."

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This is a maturation that mirrors his own life. Francois speaks of feeling a push towards becoming "tamed" as he has become older, though as soon as he says it, he immediately contradicts himself — “I haven’t really been domesticated, I'm making sure of it!” This resistance is mirrored in the rebranding process; he felt that New Heroes and Pioneers was becoming too comfortable, too tame, rather than pushing creative boundaries towards new challenges.

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But he agrees that he has found a sense of “inner peace… that things are (now) actually how they should be” in his life with his husband and their dog, a golden retriever named Jules. This newfound clarity is reflected in the brand’s new monogram and the observant reader will also notice other such “easter eggs” throughout the publications, even ones from many years ago. The personal touch has always been there, it seems.

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“The rebranding feels very natural,” he agrees. “It seems organically to be the next thing to do.”

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In an era where digital content is ephemeral and often disposable, Francois remains a staunch advocate for print. He is unashamedly a seller of paper, viewing the physical book as a decorative object that grants its owner a sense of belonging.

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"It is (about) the beauty of the product," he says. "A book has a certain gravitas."

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This commitment to physicality manifests in the granular details of the Lebled Soloviev catalog — the specific choice of paper, the depth of the ink in a photography volume, and the deliberate spacing of the layout. For Francois, these aren't just commercial production choices; they are acts of respect for the artists he publishes. He sees the publishing company as a pedestal for these creators, providing a sophisticated gallery where their work can live permanently.

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And he is a man of business as much as he is a man of art. He has meticulously curated a distribution network that places Lebled Soloviev titles in major global outlets like Barnes & Noble, through partnerships with industry leaders like Ingram and Macmillan. He approaches this side of the business with the same rigor he applies to design, typography, artist selection, and anything else. The goal is to ensure that while the books feel like niche, boutique discoveries, they are supported by a world-class infrastructure. He wants Lebled Soloviev to be a global enterprise that retains its "small print" soul — a company that behaves with the agility of an independent house but has the authority of a legacy institution.

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Ultimately, the rebrand is about the intersection of heritage and the future. It is about a son honoring a father who loved print, and a founder who has grown into the mantle of a global publisher. Francois Lebled has created more than a company; he has built a home for the love of print, a place where the Jackie O. elegance of his mother and the artistic and intellectual curiosity of his father can live on in every bound volume.

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As he looks toward the next decade, he does so with the quiet confidence of a man who knows exactly what he stands for. He is no longer the man on the beach in Nice searching for a path; he is a curator who has found his voice.

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“It’s funny,” he says, musingly, “but it was not until I made the decision to give it up that I realized the artistic path is the one I needed to take. Only then did I realize it is essential to me.”

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Perhaps it is one of the Lebled Soloviev editions that will lead us to the same conclusion, inspiring us to start our own artistic collections to found a legacy.

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