Before we chat with Mr. Lyons, let’s take a little trip down memory lane ... close your eyes, and imagine what it felt like waiting for your third-grade teacher to hand out a short quiz. The sheet of paper slips noiselessly onto your desk. You pick up the slightly damp page with both hands, look quickly at the blue-violet lettering and ... hold it up to your nose and take a deep breath. The slightly intoxicating smell of mimeograph ink!

There are innumerable gray and graying adults to whom the word "mimeo" brings to mind the chemical smell of all those sheets printed in thousands of grade school offices for generations.

But now, back to the 21st century – this is NOT your mother’s mimeo! New York-based Mimeo, Inc., only has two things in common with the clunky, and occasionally hand-cranked, mimeograph machine – its nickname and "print on demand."

Mimeo has just secured $6.5 million in new funding bringing their total funding to around $40 million. And today, 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.

This company is adding 50 new corporate accounts each quarter and has significant funding from HP, presses from Xeikon and strategic relations with EFI & Cisco. Mr. John Lyons, Mimeo’s CEO took time this week to explain all this action to our members.

WTT: Regarding your latest round of funding: investments are hard won these days and Hewlett-Packard (HP), Draper Fisher Jurvetson (DFJ), and Draper Fisher Jurvetson Gotham (DFJG) have continued to show their faith in you. You've been referred to as "partially owned by HP." Tell us about your relationship with them?

Mr. John Lyons: HP has been very supportive. Our relationship affords us access to innovative technologies, important customer introductions, and investment. HP has participated in every investment round since they first invested in 1999 and has an "observation" seat on our board of directors.


WTT: Mimeo was formed quietly in 1998 and launched with more fanfare in early 2000, at the height of the "dot com" frenzy. To what do you attribute your success?

Mr. John Lyons: Just a quick question for you, why do you say that Mimeo is a "dot com?" We are really a technology company that offers an on-demand service; an outsourced service. The Internet is a key enabler.

Mimeo is successful because we solve a real problem. Companies waste billions of dollars and millions of man-hours producing documents every year. Mimeo offers hard dollar savings and significant timesaving verses using a corporate or local copy center. And, Mimeo achieves a level of quality and reliability not available in most copy operations.


WTT: In the Spring of 2000, the competitive landscape for online copy shops looked like it was filling up. NowDocs was the most memorable of your competitors at the time, and iPrint, IKON, and Kinko's all announced entry into the market. What made Mimeo different?

Mr. John Lyons: Two main competitive advantages have lead to our success. Our ExactPrint technology, and our automated, centralized facility.

The Mimeo ExactPrint technology ensures that customers see a exact online proof including binding, paper selection and tabs. No other company has invested so much to perfect this important capability.

The easy-to-use technology is integrated with Mimeo’s highly automated, built-to-order manufacturing facility. The automation and production procedures ensure that every order is correct. This means less waste, a savings that is passed on to our customers. Automation also means faster turn-around and less labor expense.

Mimeo is able to deploy this high level of automation because we are consolidating orders from all over the world. Mimeo’s centralized economies-of-scale are so dramatic that a customer in San Francisco can have Mimeo produce a document in Memphis and FedEx it to San Francisco for less than if it had been produced locally.


WTT: Mimeo appears to be the "survivor" among the online copy shops. Your original business model was built on a centralized production facility with overnight delivery across North America. NowDocs had, and IKON and Kinko's have, a distributed print model. If you would, please differentiate between the two?

Mr. John Lyons: You know, we prefer the term "market leader" to "survivor." We believe in being proactive rather than reactive. We also believe that it’s very hard to achieve quality and economies of scale in a distributed production environment.

Quality in a distributed environment rests on consistency in equipment, staff and input. We are centralized so all of our work is produced on the same, "best of breed" equipment. Our staff is highly trained and experienced – something that’s hard to replicate at hundreds or thousands of locations. And finally, it’s almost impossible to achieve consistent quality without advanced technology like Mimeo’s ExactPrint technology.

Our centralized model, when combined with our technology, provides our customers two distinct, sustainable advantages: quality and cost savings.


WTT: There are a number of different ways to provide copy and bind services, and almost all are walk-up shops. Kinko’s, Sir Speedy, PIP, Alpha Graphics, CopyMax, Staples, etc., consist of thousands of locations. Is the copy shop next door still your greatest competitor?

John Lyon: There will always be a need for some local production capabilities; sometimes you need the documents right away. Mimeo is for when you want quality, convenience and cost savings.


WTT: In February 2001, you launched your Enterprise Solution. What was the rationale for your move away from concentrating on "walk up to the web," one-off sales to enterprise sales?

Mr. John Lyons: We have changed our offering as a result of listening to our customers. In 2001, Mimeo was really geared towards empowering individual professionals. The Signature program was geared towards rolling out Mimeo to many individuals within large corporations. Our customers liked that, but they wanted more. They wanted the ability to store documents in their personal document library longer, and as a result, we offered "Mimeo Professional" with extended storage.

Our customers also wanted to share documents in their personal library, so they could collaborate and allow others to order finished documents on-demand. This is new functionality, and now Mimeo customers can grant access to their documents to an unlimited number of people, including business associates who have not used Mimeo previously.

We have announced DocCenter, which allows corporations to avoid the high overhead associated with document storage, obsolescence and destruction of out-of-date materials. We have customers using DocCenter today, and you can expect to hear more about this service in the near future.


See Part Two.