Vistaprint 2013 Annual Report Download - page 9

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We have six customer service facilities: Montego Bay, Jamaica; Berlin, Germany; the Hague, the
Netherlands; Tunis, Tunisia; Sydney, Australia; and Mumbai, India. These centers provide phone, email and chat
support for customers who speak English, Dutch, German, French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Polish, Czech,
Swedish, Norwegian, Finnish, Danish, Turkish, Japanese and Hindi. These facilities were staffed by over 950
customer service, sales and design support employees as of June 30, 2013. Using our proprietary design software
applications, combined with voice over internet protocol telephone transmission technology and call center
management tools, our agents and designers provide a high quality customer service experience.
Post-Design Check-Out Process
Customers purchasing products check out either via a standard e-commerce self-service shopping basket
or by providing their order and payment information via telephone to one of our service agents. We offer a variety of
secure payment methods, with the payment options varying to meet the currencies, customs and practices of each
of our localized sites. These payment alternatives include credit or debit card, PayPal, check, wire transfer or other
methods. Customers can choose processing and delivery speeds that match their needs, so they can have their
custom-produced product in as little as 3 days.
Our Competitive Advantage
We have invested significantly in three core areas to build a strong advantage versus traditional
competitors:
• Proprietary technology and intellectual property
• Mass customization manufacturing
• Direct marketing expertise
Our Competitive Advantage: Proprietary Technology
We rely on our advanced proprietary technology to market to, attract and retain our customers, enable
customers to create graphic designs and place orders on our websites, and aggregate and produce multiple orders
from all over the world. This technology includes:
Design and Document Creation Technologies
Our design creation technologies enable customers, by themselves or together with the assistance of our
design support staff, to design and create high quality marketing materials from their homes or offices. Our
document model architecture and technology employs Internet-compatible data structures to define, process and
store product designs as a set of separately searchable, combinable and modifiable component elements. In
comparison to traditional document storage and presentation technologies, such as bitmap or PDFs, this
architecture provides significant advantages in storing, manipulating and modifying design elements, allowing us to
generate customized initial and later matching product design options automatically in real time.
Our auto-matching design software algorithmically generates customized product designs in real-time
based on key-word searches, enabling professional-looking graphic layouts to be easily and quickly created by
customers without graphic arts training.
VistaStudio is our product design and editing software suite that is downloaded to our customer’s computer
from our server and runs in the customer’s browser. This browser-based software provides real-time client-side
editing capabilities plus extensive system scalability. A wide variety of layouts, color schemes and fonts are
provided and an extensive selection of high quality photographs and illustrations are currently available for use by
customers in product design. Customers can also upload their own images and logos for incorporation into their
product designs.
Our Internet-based, remote, real-time, co-creativity and project management application and database
enables customers and our design agents to cooperatively design a product across the Internet in real-time, while
simultaneously engaging in voice communication.
Albumprinter Downloadable and Online Editors enable the creation of a wide range of photo products such
as calendars, canvas prints, and greeting cards through an intuitive user interface. These editors allow our