Robert S. Keane - Cimpress NV
Management
Okay, one, we – at the highest level, the reason we reorganized is, the recognition, as we've gotten to be a bigger and more complicated business, with over 10,000 employees in over 20 different countries that, to use a generalization, staying small in our – the way we operate, even as we get big is very important. And that we needed to ensure a much tighter communication across all the components of the value chain for our different businesses. And so that, as I say in the letter, the – although clearly, and I'll speak about it in a moment, there are great advantages of scale that the centralization that was tied to how we were trying to avail ourselves to those – the scale advantages had a cost which outweighed the benefits. So, again, if we're going back to what we talked about six months ago here, but I think it's an important big picture for the investors to understand is that, we focused on those few select areas where either we think we can drive the most value through scale, and operationally, that is the technology component of the mass customization platform, which we've been building for the last several years, and that remains central. And secondly, the procurement of major categories of commodities, equipment and shipping. Now, we also obviously keep central those things which must be done central, this call and other types of things. But everything else we've decentralized. Now, does that mean we are going away from the economies of scale? No. Because, what it does mean is that, take the example of National Pen versus Vistaprint. They are both very, very strong in different types of mass customized products. And the scale of National Pen in customized writing instruments is vastly larger than Vistaprint and vice versa for component and products that Vistaprint does. So, now, through the interface of the mass customization platform, Vistaprint and National Pen, as just two examples of many, can exchange value internally to Cimpress, but between each organization. And the benefits of scale that National Pen have in the production, in the supply chain, in the product development, can be a benefit to Vistaprint. Those types of point-to-point connections happen between our Upload and Print businesses, between Vistaprint and Upload and Print, between – in any different direction. So, we believe that this new structure, at the highest level, will allow us to get the majority or, potentially, the vast majority of the benefit of scale, yet, greatly mitigate or hopefully eliminate the vast majority of the cost of centralization. And by cost, it's not just the dollars we spend on centralization, but it's the cost of having to manage across a $2 billion plus revenue business and make decisions which, on average, may be right, but for each of the individual businesses, are not optimal.