The CEO of Vistaprint parent company Cimpress has left the company, as founder Robert Keane described the Q2 results as 'the worst in a long time' and put himself back as CEO.
Vistaprint prints in Australia, through a plant in Deer Park, Melbourne, which also supplies much of south east Asia, and at two other sites, one in Canada, and one in Holland. Its retail print ordering websites are in virtually every country.
Cimpress share price dropped by 28 per cent on the news, with Keane attributing the struggles to both internal and external issues. Cimpress shares are now trading at half the value of their 52 week high.
Sales growth targets at Cimpress were missed, although they grew by eight per cent to US$825m, compared with a 32 per cent jump last time out.
Vistaprint sales were up by just 1.2 per cent to US$434.3m, but profits slid, from US$99m to US$83.8m. Keane said the sales growth outlook for Vistaprint was flat to negative 'for the forseeable future'.
Keane said the departure of Vistaprint CEO Trynka Shinema – who has been in the job for the past two years - was not a direct result of the figures.
He said that the company was suffering from multiple issues impacting on customer experience, including bugs and glitches; inadequate tools and processes for decision-making; and a lack of world-class capabilities in analytically-driven marketing, merchandising and pricing. He also blamed external factors including "competitors that drive up the cost of advertising and drive down the price to customers, and key input costs such as paper increasing.”
Keane will himself now take over as CEO, and will pay himself only the legal minimum of US$455 a week. He is though on a performance bonus, but that will only come into play if Cimpress achieves an annual compound growth rate in its shares of 11 per cent over a rolling six to ten year period.
The global online retail print giant was started by Keane, initially when he was student in Paris in 1995 as an MBA project, then it morphed into Vistaprint in 1999 . Cimpress is the trading company which owns it, and other online print businesses including Tradeprint, Exagroup and Pixartprinting, WirMachenDruck, Druck.at, Easyflyer, and Printdeal.