Cimpress: Mass Customization Platform Challenges & Competitive Dynamics
Former VP at Cimpress
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Former VP at Cimpress
Interview Transcript
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Everything you talk about seems to implicitly assume that when a customer wants to buy marketing materials, they will buy everything from Cimpress. But who said this was true? Some people know brands that specialize in business cards, others in garments, flyers, and so on. There is a competitor for every business unit that Cimpress operates. So, as a micro-business owner, why would I order everything from Cimpress?
You hit the nail on the head. This is the question of who Vistaprint is. Let's focus on Vistaprint for the moment. Vistaprint built its reputation on business cards. It was known as the business card company. However, even early on, Robert always envisioned it as more than just business cards. He saw business cards as just a drop in the bucket when considering everything a small business needs. The challenge has been keeping up with the competition. We had an internal analogy where Vistaprint became so big in the business card market that it was like a manatee, great but consuming a lot, while piranhas came around and started eating away at our customers. It's not a perfect analogy, but it illustrates how we were slowly marching towards what we knew. Robert always had the vision for more than just the specialty, but we haven't given it enough to truly compete.
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