Vistaprint 2014 Annual Report Download - page 7

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PART I
Item 1. Business
Overview
We are a technology and manufacturing-driven company that aggregates, via the Internet, large volumes of
individually small, customized orders for a broad spectrum of print, signage, apparel and similar products. We
produce those orders in highly automated, capital and technology intensive production facilities in a manner that we
believe makes our production techniques significantly more competitive than those of traditional suppliers. We bring
our products to market via various brands that deliver marketing products and services to the small business, and
home and family markets. These brands include Vistaprint, our leading global brand for micro business marketing
products and services, as well as several brands that we have acquired that serve the needs of various market
segments, including resellers, small and medium businesses with differentiated service needs, and consumers
purchasing products for personal use.
Through innovative technology, we offer our customers a broad selection of customized products and
services, low pricing and personalized customer service. While we offer a broad selection of designs and formats,
we seek to reduce manufacturing complexity and costs by using limited characteristics that can be reconfigured and
combined. This reduces our costs versus comparable customized products produced using traditional methods.
This approach has allowed us to successfully penetrate the large, fragmented and geographically dispersed micro
business and home and family markets. As we penetrate deeper into other markets, we expect to increase the
number of product characteristics that can be reconfigured and combined.
We have standardized, automated and integrated the design and production process, from design
conceptualization to product shipment and service delivery. On the Vistaprint websites, customers typically use our
proprietary online design software to easily create and order full-color, personalized, professional-looking physical
and digital marketing products and services, without any prior design training or experience. Customers have
access to extensive graphic designs, design templates, photographs and illustrations as well as logo design
services and content suggestions. We are also able to automatically match and adapt graphic content from one
product format to another, which allows us to generate and display additional products and services as part of the
ordering process. For photo products used by home and family customers, our Albumprinter subsidiary also
provides self-service design software for page creation and layout functions. In contrast, through our People & Print
Group and Pixartprinting websites, we focus on the upload of production-ready graphic files that were created in
desktop publishing files.
Our proprietary Internet-based order processing systems receive and store tens of thousands of individual
orders on a daily basis and, using complex algorithms, organize these orders for efficient production and delivery to
our customers. Through our production technologies and highly automated manufacturing facilities, we are able to
significantly reduce the costs and inefficiencies associated with traditional production and can provide customized
finished products in as little as 24 hours from design to delivery. During the fiscal year ended June 30, 2014,
excluding our People & Print Group and Pixartprinting acquisitions, our customers placed approximately 30.5 million
orders.
Market and Industry Background
The Marketplace for Micro Business Marketing Products and Services
The primary market for our Vistaprint brand is the micro business market, generally businesses or
organizations with fewer than 10 employees and usually 2 or fewer. We believe that there are approximately
60 million businesses with fewer than 10 employees in the United States, Canada, and the European Union and
that these micro businesses undergo frequent changes with many forming and dissolving each year, creating a
large market for business identity products and services in addition to marketing products and services. We also
believe that, in response to the growth of the Internet and the emergence of digital production technologies, many
micro businesses are shifting from traditional suppliers of customized marketing products and media toward online
alternatives.
In the past, a business seeking customized marketing products and services could either hire a designer to
develop and coordinate the production of marketing materials or produce printed materials themselves using
desktop software and an inkjet or laser printer. These choices historically prohibited a majority of small businesses
from presenting a professional image through marketing material as the former is seen by many as too expensive
Form 10-K