VISTAPRINT — WEB MASTERS

In a traditional industry like the graphic arts, VistaPrint has found success by taking a bit of a non-conventional, forward-thinking approach. It all started with the vision of Robert Keane, president and CEO, when he founded the company in 1995.

Keane’s idea included developing technology that delivers high-quality, low-cost graphic design and printing to small businesses and consumers while still providing premium customer service. VistaPrint is applying the principles of computer-integrated manufacturing (CIM) to drive out costs and improve response times. It connects its customers directly to its CIM chain by providing a layout program that they can use on the company’s Website, www.vistaprint.com.

CIM enables VistaPrint to produce thousands of unique print jobs per production day while using a minimal amount of labor per order. Business cards are the company’s top seller, but VistaPrint’s menu of Internet-accessed products doesn’t stop there. Postcards, brochures, data sheets, stationery, presentation folders, greeting cards, even refrigerator magnets can be ordered in an instant and produced within hours.

“VistaPrint has the potential to be the biggest disruption to printing since the photocopier,” Keane assesses.

The truth in Keane’s bold statement can be found in the numbers VistaPrint has been producing. The company averages more than 12,000 unique print orders per day and, for the past two years, has regularly added more than 100,000 new customers per month. It operates 16 localized VistaPrint Websites that service customers in more than 120 countries. There are more than 500 VistaPrint employees globally.

Small Business Focus

The average-size of an order via the Website is $30, company execs report, and most come from the small office, home office (SOHO) market. Ninety percent of customers do the graphic design for their jobs through the VistaPrint Website.

VistaPrint offers a virtually unlimited number of templates, while also giving clients a chance to create their own designs, and upload graphics and photos. The program is simple to use, so that each job can be designed quickly and flow directly into VistaPrint’s prepress department.

For customers who need design assistance, VistaPrint offers free design services through a toll-free number where a trained agent will design the product at no charge. With an average of less than 30 seconds wait time to get a human agent, customers go through a short interview process to inform the designer of their needs. The designer will put together a customized job for the customer to see and approve. Three revision cycles are included in significantly less time than typically available from graphic designers.

Once designed, printing jobs are aggregated, so they can be ganged together for printing on a 40˝ sheet. VistaPrint uses this ganging plate configuration so multiple jobs can be produced on one plate. The number of projects produced on a single plate can vary. As an example, a sheet can hold 143 business cards, 42 postcards, 21 oversized postcards, nine sheets of letterhead, etc. This ganging process is what enables VistaPrint to print massive volumes of products at low costs.

The average run length for each aggregated sheet is 250 to 500 copies. Each job uses as little as 60 seconds of production labor per order.

The company runs five 41˝ MAN Roland 700 sheetfed presses, each equipped with five printing units, in-line coating and perfecting capabilities. Two operate in a 54,000-square-foot facility in Venlo, the Netherlands, while the other three are deployed at the firm’s new 68,000-square-foot North American production facility in Windsor, ON, just south of Detroit. Another Roland 700 is scheduled to be installed at Windsor this year.

“We use PECOM (MAN Roland’s production system) to track job-level information, which we use to establish press capacity,” explains Chris Connors, vice president of manufacturing. “It provides us with a bridge of information from the plate making process to the press.”

The PECOM system helps VistaPrint run extremely high volumes of very short runs. The system automatically dials in settings, eliminating most pre-run press adjustments. This, along with MAN Roland’s Auto Plate Loading (APL), enables VistaPrint to achieve extra-rapid changeover of jobs with minimal waste.

Matching Machines

Connors adds that the replication of presses in Venlo and Windsor gives the company numerous advantages.

“Because we were already familiar with our Roland 700s in Venlo, we were able to significantly expedite the ramp-up in Windsor,” he points out. “Our press operators in Venlo shared a great deal of knowledge with us and, as a result, we can solve problems faster together. In fact, we exchanged workforces for training purposes and many Venlo employees were at Windsor during the ramp-up phase.”

VistaPrint expects to achieve a two hour “click-to-ship” benchmark. Under that plan, it would take less than two hours from when a customer submits a finished order to the time the printed product is ready for pickup by an express shipping provider.