Gene Plotkin is an accomplished sales leader with a diverse range of experience in revenue-driving roles. Over the past 17 years, he has excelled in various positions, both as an individual contributor and as a leader, across a wide spectrum of companies, spanning from early-stage startups to global enterprises. Presently, Gene is the VP of Corporate Sales at Mimeo, where he leads the Enterprise Sales Team, playing a pivotal role in driving the company’s sales strategies and growth initiatives.
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Chris Santomassimo: I’m your host today, Chris Santomassimo from OGC Solutions, and I’m really excited to introduce a new friend of the podcast: Gene Plotkin. Gene comes to us from Mimeo and where he’s the Vice President of Sales. So welcome to the podcast, Gene!
Gene Plotkin: Thank you. It’s a pleasure to be here.
Chris Santomassimo: I was so intrigued by our conversation before the podcast, just about Mimeo in particular. Well, first of all, you’re headquartered in a combination of New York and also Memphis where you’ve got a big facility. You’ve also really incorporated technology to be the core of the company and that really sets you apart from a lot of your competitors. So I’d really love you to introduce Mimeo as a company, what you do, and talk about some of those differentiators.
Gene Plotkin: I appreciate it. So as you mentioned in the opening, I am the Vice President of Sales. I’ve been here for over 11 years and pretty much held every revenue-generating customer facing role over that time.
Mimeo started with the idea of “Hey, wouldn’t it be really great if print was as simple as just uploading something to the Internet, and then seeing what it looks like in real-time, and being able to place an order and have it delivered anywhere?” Of course, right now you’re saying, yeah, of course, that’s the standard. But back when this idea was conceived in the early mid-90s, that was definitely a very novelty idea.
Our founders were tech people, and we were the very first web-to-print company out there. Our idea was, hey, what if we create this technology and then build infrastructure around it in order to be able to facilitate things like being able to get your documents printed and delivered next morning anywhere you want in the United States. Of course, since then we have expanded.
We’re now global in that we do have facilities in the UK and Germany, as well as partners around the world. Yeah, but our secret sauce is really this idea that you should be able to interact with print in a really simple way and know exactly what you’re getting, see what the status of everything is, and easily accessing everything from one place. For us, it was always build the technology first, and then build the infrastructure to support it.
It really requires a lot more infrastructure, planning, and technology to really execute. It’s one thing to place an order, it’s another thing to get it by that deadline. But ultimately, the finished product is actually a unique manufactured thing, whether it’s a binder, a brochure, a mounted poster, you name it.
Chris Santomassimo: Well, what are some of the typical customer use cases for Mimeo? Where do you see that activity and that really time-sensitive demand, where your technology really comes into play?
Gene Plotkin: For us, the big thing is, we understand that print is only a small part of your business. Now, it might be a crucial part, but the people that are ordering the materials, they have a job and very rarely is a core component of that is printing. It’s more of like print is something that they need to have in order to be able to do their job. For us, handling that last mile is what we take off of your plate. Fundamentally, we’re a company that solves a logistical problem. You need something created that’s unique, and you need to deliver it to one or multiple locations.
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