Vistaprint 2009 Annual Report Download - page 31

refused to prevent companies from purchasing the trademark “Vistaprint” in the U.S. As a result, we
may not be able to prevent our competitors from advertising to, and directly competing for, customers
who search on the term “Vistaprint” on U.S. search engines.
Various private ‘spam’ blacklisting or similar entities have in the past, and may in the future,
interfere with our e-mail solicitation, the operation of our websites and our ability to conduct
business.
We depend primarily on e-mail to market to and communicate with our customers. Various private
entities attempt to regulate the use of e-mail for commercial solicitation. These entities often advocate
standards of conduct or practice that significantly exceed current legal requirements and classify
certain e-mail solicitations that comply with current legal requirements as unsolicited bulk e-mails, or
“spam.” Some of these entities maintain “blacklists” of companies and individuals, and the websites,
Internet service providers and Internet protocol addresses associated with those companies and
individuals, that do not adhere to what the blacklisting entity believes are appropriate standards of
conduct or practices for commercial e-mail solicitations. If a company’s Internet protocol addresses are
listed by a blacklisting entity, e-mails sent from those addresses may be blocked if they are sent to any
Internet domain or Internet address that subscribes to the blacklisting entity’s service or purchases its
blacklist.
Some of our Internet protocol addresses currently are listed with one or more blacklisting entities
despite our belief that our commercial e-mail solicitations comply with all applicable laws. In the future,
our other Internet protocol addresses may also be listed with one or more blacklisting entities. We may
not be successful in convincing the blacklisting entities to remove us from their lists. Although the
blacklisting we have experienced in the past has not had a significant impact on our ability to operate
our websites, send commercial e-mail solicitations, or manage or operate our corporate email
accounts, it has, from time to time, interfered with our ability to send operational e-mails—such as
password reminders, invoices and electronically delivered products—to customers and others, and to
send and receive emails to and from our corporate email accounts. In addition, as a result of being
blacklisted, we have had disputes with, or concerns raised by, various service providers who perform
services for us, including co-location and hosting services, Internet service providers and electronic
mail distribution services. There can be no guarantee that we will not continue to be blacklisted or that
we will be able to successfully remove ourselves from those lists. Blacklisting of this type could
interfere with our ability to market our products and services, communicate with our customers and
otherwise operate our websites, and operate and manage our corporate email accounts, all of which
could have a material negative impact on our business and results of operations.
We may not succeed in cross selling additional products and services to our customers.
We seek to acquire customers based on their interest in one or more of our products and then
offer additional related products to those customers. If our customers are not interested in our
additional products or have an adverse experience with the products they were initially interested in,
the sale of additional products and services to those customers and our ability to increase our revenue
and to improve our results of operations could be adversely affected.
Interruptions to our website operations, information technology systems, production processes
or customer service operations as a result of natural disasters, errors in our technology,
capacity constraints, security breaches, contract disputes, or other causes could damage our
reputation and brand and substantially harm our business and results of operations.
The satisfactory performance, reliability, security and availability of our websites, transaction
processing systems, network infrastructure, production facilities and customer service operations are
critical to our reputation, and our ability to attract and retain customers and to maintain adequate
customer service levels. Any future interruptions that result in the unavailability of our websites,
Form 10-K
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