Vistaprint is growing its Australian presence even before its new trade print program starts bearing fruit, with a 14 per cent leap in Asia Pacific revenue for this quarter.
Asia Pacific sales in the three months ending September, of which the Australian plant is easily the biggest contributor, increased to US$17.8m from US$15.6m in the same period last year, according to the company’s first quarter report.
However the region saw a dip in its share contribution to global revenue, representing 5.3 per cent compared to 5.6 per cent in Q1 2014.
[Related: More financial reports coverage]
The whole company, which had a turnover of more than US$1.2bn worldwide last year, made sales US$334m this quarter and doubled operating profit from US$8.4m to US$16.9m.
The quarter’s revenue was a boost of 21 per cent of last year’s $275m, much of it coming from Europe which almost doubled to $138.4m.
The revenue increase, both in Australia and worldwide was driven by a 10 per cent increase in the average order value as the company tries to move away from the super discount model it is known for.
Vistaprint Australia, NZ and Japan vice president Paul Heath says the company is now focusing on getting more from each customer instead of selling solely on price.
“We have dramatically reduced our discounts to move away from that business model, which means while we might be attracting less customers they are spending more,” he says.
The quarterly results say total orders processed were down four per cent to about 6.8 million, while new customer counts were flat in North America, and declined in Europe and Asia Pacific due to changes to marketing practices and ‘a deliberate reduction of advertising expense’.
Heath says the decision to reposition the brand was made because there is a higher return on investment for higher-value orders and that it wanted to change how it was viewed.
“Vistaprint effectively invented the low-cost web-to-print model and captured a high share of the price-conscious market to build a big client base, but we needed more than just that going forward,” he says.
He says the Asia Pacific results are in line with expectations and he thinks the new reseller focused Trade Advantage program will be a significant source of revenue in the future.
“It is a great opportunity to attract a different kind of client and revenue stream,” he says.
“We are excited with the signups so far and a lot of clients have given us multiple repeat orders which shows printers like our offering.”
Vistaprint is offering $100 vouchers for new trade clients to test the company’s capabilities.
“There’s been a lot of misinformation about us out there and we haven’t been in trade printing before so it gives clients an opportunity to try us without risk,” he says.
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