How many printing companies handle 57,000 orders a day? How many could? Not many, I'd wager. In fact there might just be the one - Vistaprint.
A chance encounter with the Financial Times' Executive Appointments supplement caused me to think afresh about this business, because last week Vistaprint advertised for a new "vice president - European business unit finance".
A glance at its corporate factsheet reveals the stellar growth achieved by the company over the past five years. In its last financial year to the end of June 2009, and despite the downturn, sales grew 29% to $516m. The proportion of non-US sales has steadily increased, and was just over 50% of that. Hence no doubt the expansion of its European management team. Its European manufacturing hub is in Venlo, in the Netherlands.
Everything is dealt with via web-to-print, of course, backed up by clever manufacturing facilities and a host of patents. The amount of print purchased online must be huge now - Vistaprint talks of the small business marketing opportunity as a $25bn market worldwide. It also made me think about how much SME print business has been diverted in Vistaprint's direction that would previously have been the natural domain of Kall Kwik, Prontaprint and other similar high street operations. At a rough guess, I'd say the answer is "a lot".
Coming across that advert has made me realise that I've been remiss in not trying Vistaprint's services for myself, I shall be sure to do so when the opportunity next presents itself. I like to make a point of testing out online print offerings - be it Moo, Moonpig, M&S or Mailshots Online - as it's always a useful knowledge-gathering exercise. This in turn reminded me of some wise words from web-to-print expert Peter Lancaster in a PrintWeek piece last year, when he suggested that every printer should buy something from online providers such as Vistaprint - I would wholeheartedly second that advice, especially if your market overlaps with anything they produce and you're not yet offering a web-to-print service. That old "know thine enemy" philosophy really does ring true.
