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 About Vistaprint
 


Company Background

Designing and printing documents-putting graphics and the typeset word to paper-has been around for centuries. While presses have evolved and graphic design and printing technologies have improved, the basic concept is still the same. Graphic designers create a design and printers print it.

While this system can work well for print-run lengths of thousands, even millions of graphically designed printed materials, it doesn’t work as well for smaller orders. The reason for this is that both traditional designers and printers have to go through the exact same design and printing set up process regardless of whether they are producing an order for 100,000 postcards or just 10. That means the cost for the smaller orders is much larger per piece than the cost of a larger order.

That leaves the small business looking for marketing materials such as business cards, brochures and folders, or the family needing birthday party invitations, thank you notes and return address labels, with limited, and often cumbersome and expensive options. Color copies at the local copy shop or fumbling with a computer and ink jet printer provide low quality and surprisingly costly solutions while buying standard invitations or note cards offer limited options and generic feel. In addition, hiring a graphic designer and using a local printer is inherently expensive and time consuming.

Robert Keane, the president and CEO of Vistaprint, founded Vistaprint intending to solve this problem and bring high-quality, low-cost printed products to small businesses and consumers. A veteran of the small business market, Robert’s vision for Vistaprint emerged from his experience with the development of a retail kiosk design and printing system and his in-depth knowledge of the small business desktop publishing market. Bringing knowledge in direct mail marketing, desktop publishing, manufacturing operations and strategy, Robert has led Vistaprint to the success it has achieved to date.


Designed, Printed and Delivered in as Little as 3 Days

VistaPrint is a leading online supplier of high-quality graphic design services and customized printed products to small businesses and consumers. VistaPrint’s proprietary technologies enable the company to offer custom designed, full-color, low-cost printed products, even in small quantities. With VistaPrint, an order can be designed, printed and received in as little as three business days.

Unlike costly traditional graphic arts techniques which design and produce custom printed orders one at a time, VistaPrint employs technologies to facilitate the design and aggregation of custom orders from around the globe. VistaPrint regularly receives an average of over 43,000 orders per day. Products are printed at VistaPrint's two state-of-the-art plants in North America and Europe that total over 200,000 square feet/18,000 square meters of production space. It is because of the sheer volume of orders processed that VistaPrint can achieve economies of scale and pass along high-quality, low-cost, design and printing products and services to small businesses and consumers alike.

The printing is done in groups using a single pass on state of the art automated, high-volume, large format professional quality presses. Once printed, the products are cut down to size using a computerized robotic cutter, assembled, packaged and addressed using proprietary software driven processes, and shipped to the customer. Using as little as 60 seconds of production labor per order versus an hour or more for traditional printers, this process enables VistaPrint to print more high-quality customized orders at a low cost compared to traditional printers.


Premium Customer Service

Low-cost, high-quality products are only part of the Vistaprint story. Vistaprint believes in providing premium customer service and offers a satisfaction guarantee on all printed products.

Because Vistaprint knows there are many types of small businesses and individuals out there with many different needs, the company offers two ways to design and order products. Customers can:

1. use Vistaprint’s online tools to design their own products from scratch in a “self-service” mode, picking from thousands of professionally designed templates, searching our image bank of over 70,000 images, or uploading their own logos and photos;

2. design in their own desktop publishing programs then upload the designs to Vistaprint.

Because of Vistaprint’s technology and the efficiencies achieved by the large number of orders processed on a daily basis, small businesses can afford, for the first time, to print high-quality, professional-looking corporate materials to market and brand their business. For busy moms, brides & grooms, working parents and anyone looking to create custom invitations, thank you cards or holiday cards, Vistaprint enables them to do so quickly and easily for significantly less than traditional alternatives.


Success, the Vistaprint Way

Vistaprint has serviced more than 10 million customers in over 120 countries with a broad spectrum of products ranging from business cards and brochures to invitations and holiday cards. More than 1.5 million new customers were added in the quarter ending December 31, 2008.