Cimpress is a fine business that has been in search of strategic direction for the last 6-7 years, groping for the right balance between value-added customization and low-cost production. These two sources of differentiation are often at odds because the scale economies required to claim a cost advantage depend on running lots and lots of volume across significant fixed costs, a process that is best suited for homogeneous products that share a common manufacturing base and process. You can imagine casting a single widget SKU over and over again. There are no incremental set-up costs from line changeovers. The assembly line just keeps humming as long as it can, spewing a stream of identical widgets onto a continuously flowing conveyor belt, the upfront cost of heavy equipment diffused over more and more manufactured units. At the other extreme, a stylist’s average cost per haircut stays roughly the same, whether he does 20 haircuts a day or 30.