Vistaprint NV

Cimpress is a strategically focused group of more than a dozen businesses that specialize in mass customization, via which we deliver large volumes of individually small-sized customized orders for a broad spectrum of print, signage, photo merchandise, invitations and announcements, writing instruments, packaging, apparel and other categories. Mass customization is a core element of the business model of each Cimpress business. Stan Davis, in his 1987 strategy manifesto "Future Perfect" coined the term mass customization to describe "generating an infinite variety of goods and services, uniquely tailored to customers". In 2001, Tseng & Jiao defined mass customization as "producing goods and services to meet individual customers' needs with near mass production efficiency". We discuss mass customization in more detail further below.

We have grown substantially over the past decade, from $0.5 billion of revenue in fiscal year 2009 to $2.8 billion of revenue in fiscal year 2019, and as we have grown we have achieved important benefits of scale. However, we also believe it is critical for us to "stay small as we get big". By this we mean that we need to serve customers and act and compete with focus, nimbleness and speed that is typical of smaller, entrepreneurial firms but often not typical of larger firms. This is because we face intense competition across all our businesses and we must constantly and rapidly improve the value we deliver to customers. To stay small as we get big, our strategy calls for us to pursue a deeply decentralized organizational structure which delegates responsibility, authority and resources to the CEOs and managing directors of our various businesses.

Specifically, our strategy is to invest in and build customer-focused, entrepreneurial mass customization businesses for the long term, which we manage in a decentralized, autonomous manner. We drive competitive advantage across Cimpress through a select few shared strategic capabilities that have the greatest potential to create Cimpress-wide value. We limit all other central activities to only those which absolutely must be performed centrally.