Mimeo delivers on-demand printing globally with the help of Flatfile

The challenge

Before the photocopier there was the mimeograph. This analog turbine of duplication was the preferred print-on-demand technology of schools, offices, and other organizations for the rapid duplication and distribution of printed documents. Mimeographs were portable, easy to use, and produced — nearly — legible facsimiles. Getting to turn the crank on a mimeograph for your teacher was a sure sign that your shined apples had made a good impression and your star was rising. Owning a mimeograph was the pride of every would-be soapbox revolutionary. 

Now, in the age of personal printers and photocopiers, these workhorses of printing’s past are hard to find. But their spirit lives on in Mimeo, the fastest printer in the world. The Memphis, Tennessee, based company not only provides on-demand printing services for global enterprises, business networks, and school systems, but has also developed the logistics expertise to deliver its printed products to millions of customers worldwide on time and at scale.

When a major fast-food franchise operator needs to send new training manuals in multiple languages to all of its restaurants, Mimeo gets the job done. When a school system needs new workbooks sent to all of its students’ homes, Mimeo makes it happen.

Mimeo, which began as a humble startup in 2000 and was the world’s first cloud-based B2B printing company, now dominates the global printing and logistics industry. As such, the company needs to keep track of all its shipments and ensure they get to the right destination at lightning speed. But, when Mimeo landed a giant contract to print a high volume of school workbooks, it found it was up against some tough challenges.

“Our customer had very specific needs that we addressed by creating a special platform for them,” said Heath Cajandig, Vice President of Product at Mimeo. “They also had a very firm schedule. We were not in a position to delay the school year. We had to deliver, and we only had six weeks to do it.”

Managing the names, addresses, and order details for each student required a massive import of data. It also required that that data was accurate and correctly formatted.

“We have always handled our data import internally,” said Cajandig. “But this time, we needed to do it faster and with the assurance that it would be done without errors and securely.”

Mimeo turned to Flatfile to expedite the import and clean up of its customer’s data, using the Flatfile API to seamlessly integrate the data management technology into the custom cloud-based solution Mimeo had created for its customer. Because Flatfile is SOC 2, HIPAA, and GDPR compliant and complies with industry regulations and standards, Mimeo could trust that the student’s data would remain safe. Mimeo also finished the project with plenty of time to spare.

“We needed something that was bulletproof yet flexible enough to handle all the heavy lifting, manipulation, validation and so on,“ recalls Cajandig. “And, we needed to build it fast. We were able to implement Flatfile by the time the contract was signed. It took us about 5 to 7 days in total.”

Cajandig says that even though Mimeo has a development team with the capability to build custom solutions for internal use, it still made sense to outsource this solution to Flatfile. Not having to concern themselves with the data import aspect of their process meant fewer speed bumps in ongoing projects, fewer support tickets to respond to, and faster turnaround times. 

“Flatfile allows us to focus on the things that we do special,” says Cajandig. “It allows us to go to market very fast in a way that is very durable. That’s the key — very durable.”