Mimeo has just secured $6.5 million in new funding bringing their total funding to around $40 million. Yesterday, the company launched DocCenter - a document management system, that allows organizations to post content to a centralized digital location and provide multiple-user remote access for printing and next day delivery.

Mr. John Lyons, Mimeo’s CEO took time this week to explain all this action to our members.

In part two of this interview, Mr. Lyons discusses their actual performance, revenue goals, partnerships and the future. (See part one.)

WTT: Early in 2001, you announced a number of milestones achieved in 2000, such as: more than 100 enterprise accounts, tens of millions of pages per quarter, average transaction of $500, and the average corporate customer uses the service 3-4 times a year. What kind of growth are you anticipating for 2002?

Mr. John Lyons: Our growth has really picked up. I think this is a result of customers desire to save money, yet still enjoy the convenience, reliability and higher quality. Our growth is ahead of our plan, with 2002 revenue already well ahead of 2001 revenue.

While I can’t share our revenue or profit numbers, I can tell you we are very pleased. Our July revenue was three times the same month last year. We are adding about 50 corporate accounts quarterly, and new individual accounts every day.


WTT: In March 2001, you announced more than 100% increase in your international business. How has international business contributed to your revenue and growth? Are your international customers affiliated with US companies, or are you finding your customers exchanging native language documents in-country or across borders?

Mr. John Lyons: Mimeo is accessible anywhere in the world, for delivery to North America. Multinational and international customers can use Mimeo to reduce printing costs and avoid costly international shipping. For example, a package sent from Tokyo to New York using the Mimeo service would cost about $10.85 in shipping vs. $81.30 using traditional shipping methods. That’s an 87% savings just on the shipping. The document also arrives sooner and bypasses customs. The Mimeo technology is also font independent, so we naturally accommodate international languages like French, German and even Japanese.

Many of our corporate customers are large multinational companies like Siemens or Pfizer. That said, I would estimate that over 95% of our customers physically reside in US or Canada. In fact, about 50% of our customers send documents back to themselves, leveraging the cost savings offered by our automated Memphis facility, and taking advantage of the convenience of the online ordering.


WTT: At one time there was a lot of debate about services with downloadable drivers and those that accepted native file formats for "copy and bind" services. Could you describe your solution and its advantages and disadvantages?

Mr. John Lyons: I don’t believe the debate was ever about whether a print driver ensures the highest quality. I think the debate was whether customers were willing to install a print driver.

Customers want quality and quality can only be achieved with a print driver. Our experience is overwhelming proof customers understand the importance of quality and have no issue installing our software.

A properly configured print driver, integrated with a structured production environment ensures consistent document production. With a driver, the system can include all the important PC settings that may be affecting the document layout; settings such as fonts, margins, macros, passwords and even linked or embedded graphics.

Mimeo ExactPrint takes driver technology further to insure the print instructions are compressed, encrypted, and successfully transmitted to Memphis for automated production.


WTT: Wireless communication has expanded into many different business areas. Earlier this year Electronics for Imaging (EFI) announced its PrintMe Network. Please, tell us about your wireless strategy and your participation in this partnership. What business problems(s) will you solve as part of the PrintMe Network?

Mr. John Lyons: EFI is doing some important work in enabling anytime, anywhere printing through PrintMe Networks. Customers want to be able to access and order documents from mobile devices.

EFI and Mimeo are aligned in our commitment to make it easier for business professionals to access and print their documents no matter where they are. We are also aligned in our goal of helping corporations control their overall print expense. Expect to hear additional announcements about the Mimeo and PrintMe relationship in the future.


WTT: What do you see for Mimeo’s future?

Mr. John Lyons: We predict in five years from now, when business professionals think of producing documents, they will think first of Mimeo, second of competitors that will eventually mimic Mimeo’s approach, and third of the way they used to produce documents -- schlepping down to the local copy center. Over time corporate copy centers will get smaller and companies will save billions of dollars as a result.


Thank you Mr. Lyons for sharing your thoughts with our members.