Industry Expert Charlie Corr Joins Mimeo

New Vice President of Corporate Strategy for Web-Based Printing Company Looks Forward to New Challenges

By Cary Sherburne, Senior WTT Editor

June 28, 2007 -- This week, Charlie Corr surprised the industry by announcing that he was leaving research firm InfoTrends, where he was a Group Director, to assume a position with web-based print service provider Mimeo as Vice President of Corporate Strategy. Corr is a leading industry expert, with 28 years of industry experience split between operational experience, consulting and research and is a popular speaker at industry events.  WhatTheyThink spoke to Corr as he was departing research firm InfoTrends to pursue this new opportunity.

WTT:  Charlie, thanks for speaking with us today.  I have to say I was surprised when I heard the news.  How long have you been at InfoTrends, and can you share with our readers what your role there was?

CC:  I joined InfoTrends, then CAP Ventures, in 1998, as you should know, since you hired me there!  Most recently I was Group Director, responsible for several consulting services, including On Demand Printing and Publishing, the Document Outsourcing Consulting Service, Production Workflow Solutions, Production & Wide Format Printing, Business Development Strategies, Custom Communications, Jetting Technology Opportunities and Corporate Consulting. I spent a lot of time with clients, including vendors, printers and corporate, helping them with operational and strategic issues.  I also was actively involved in research, including multi-client studies.  So it was a wide range of responsibilities encompassing a broad swath across the industry. 

WTT:  What will InfoTrends do to fill the vacuum you are leaving behind?

CC:  Charlie Pesko has promoted Jim Hamilton to Group Director of the Production & Printing Group.  Jim, as you know, has been at InfoTrends since 1995 and is a very talented and knowledgeable individual.  Barb Pellow, who re-joined InfoTrends at the beginning of this year, will be taking all of the software and solutions-related services for the Production Group under her very capable wing. They will be looking to add more talent to the team, and I am sure they will continue to provide the same excellent level of services to the industry as they have for years.

WTT:  What did you do before you joined InfoTrends?

CC:  For 13 years, I managed operations of the Printing and Publishing operation at Harvard University, taking them into the digital printing era.

WTT:  What drove your decision to join Mimeo?

CC:  I have been doing a lot of work around the continuing evolution of the Internet and its underlying infrastructure, including the increased collaboration enabled by Web 2.0.  When the Mimeo position came up, I was immediately interested.  I found the opportunity to move back to the operational side of the equation attractive and I could not think of a better company to join than Mimeo, the pioneer in web and print solutions with the resources to execute against the next generation business models in printing. There is some allure to being back in a role where I am implementing and operationalizing after having been on the consultative side for so long.  In the consulting role, you are like Switzerland.  You are never really partisan.  So that is the other change: you can take a more partisan position on things than you can when you are in a consulting role.  I have been a fan of Mimeo for years and the partisan pull to help it grow is too strong to pass up.  Mimeo has a lot of opportunity in front of it, and I am looking forward to playing a more integral role in the practical application of a lot of the work I have been doing over the last several years.

WTT:  How is Mimeo doing these days?  The company keeps a bit of a low profile from a PR perspective.

CC:  Mimeo is doing very well.  As you know Mimeo is private and does not publicly disclose detailed financial information.  I can tell you that the company has been growing at 50% or more per year for the last several years.  Our CEO Adam Slutsky, has been quoted as saying, "We are profitable and closer to $100 million in annual revenues than $0." It is interesting if you think about the dot-com era, when you and I were working with companies like iPrint, imageX and some of the other early players.  Many of them are gone, of course, but look at companies like Mimeo and VistaPrint today - both web-based service providers and easily ranking in the top 100 printing companies in the industry from a revenue perspective.  It's exciting to see how that space has developed and changed in such a short time, and even more exciting to think about where it goes from here.

WTT:  Where does it go from here, from your perspective?

CC:  If you think about where Mimeo is today and where the company wants to move, there are opportunities to move in multiple directions - geographically, by supporting new vertical markets, a broader suite of applications, and to leverage the power of the web more fully under Web 2.0 strategies.  That is all interesting stuff and I am looking forward to digging into it.   There is no shortage of opportunities for Mimeo; the key is to find the right ones.  A lot of my role will be to help Mimeo decide what is next, where the better opportunities are, and to go through a process of prioritizing the opportunities and then working to operationalize them.

WTT:  What impact, if any, has the FedEx Kinko's acquisition had on Mimeo?  There was a lot of speculation that Mimeo, being located at the foot of the FedEx runway and being fairly tightly integrated operationally, would be heavily impacted from a competitive perspective by that acquisition and by the subsequent placement of FedEx Kinko's own product hub in the same area.

CC:  I don't really think it has had much impact at all.  You and I know it is a huge market.  FedEx keeps those businesses fairly discrete.  And I can't imagine that FedEx would want to give up the millions it receives in shipping business, even if it is from a competitor to Kinko's.

WTT:  Both FedEx Kinko's and VistaPrint have recently announced creative services and direct mail offerings.  Do you see an opportunity there for Mimeo?

CC:  Those are options I am sure we will consider.  A lot of what Mimeo produces today is end-user generated content.  Another interesting area with a lot of opportunity is in the templated space, where a central resource creates templates for brochures, direct mail and other materials that users can modify within certain limits. Another opportunity is to go after more professionally generated content.  If you think about the extension opportunities for Mimeo, they are centered around all different types of documents and the way they are created and distributed, whether they are manuals, marketing materials, or sales collateral.

WTT:  Historically, Mimeo's "sweet spot" has been training materials.  Is that still the case?

CC: While training remains an important part of the product mix, Mimeo's offering has expanded to serve the needs of Human Resource professionals, manufacturing groups, retailers, sales professionals and marketers.  But more importantly, Mimeo has a blended offering. A key differentiator is the 24/7 customer service, that among other things, results in very few errors and almost no rework.  As a result, Mimeo ends up being very high touch even though it is web-based provider.  You also see that in banking - there is not a lot of bricks and mortar interactivity with banking customers anymore because people use ATMs and online banking, but there are trusted people at the other end of the phone or email who can answer questions and deal with issues when necessary.  This model has some very interesting potential.
WTT:  Since you and your family current reside in Massachusetts and Mimeo headquarters are located in New York, will you be moving?

CC:  Yes.  We will be relocating to Connecticut before the start of the school year.  It is actually very good timing for us.  Our oldest daughter is an attorney in Hartford, and our younger daughter will just be starting her junior year in high school.  Actually, the family is very excited about the opportunity, especially the fact that I will be doing a lot less travel.

WTT:  Charlie, this is a real coup for Mimeo, and I am sure you will be missed at InfoTrends. It sounds like an exciting opportunity and I hope it all works out for you.  Is there anything you would like to add before we close?

CC:  My time at InfoTrends was wonderful. I got to work with great people like you. We work in a dynamic industry and I am happy to be remaining in that industry in a different role. Mimeo has been around almost ten years, and the company realizes, like many companies do, that when you reach a certain point of growth, you have to have more management depth to take the company to the next level.  Running as lean as Mimeo has, people are so consumed in day-to-day operations that it is difficult to find the "think time" required to be really strategic.  It is too easy to get drawn into "now."  So my role will be to help them take the company to the next level from this strategic perspective. We live in interesting times. There have been pretty dramatic industry changes over the last decade and as the web space continues to mature, I am looking forward to playing a role in ensuring that Mimeo leverages all of that and continues to have a first-mover advantage as the company continues to evolve.

Cary can be reached via email at cary@sherburneassociates.com, online at www.sherburneassociates.com and by telephone at 603-430-5463.

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