Type Private Founder Ken Newman | Predecessor Action Envelope | |
Industry Envelopes and paper products Founded 1971 (46 years ago) (1971) in Queens, New York City, New York, United States Headquarters 5300 New Horizons Boulevard
Amityville, New York 11701
United States | ||
Envelopes.com is an American envelope and stationery supply company, founded in 1971 as Action Envelope. It transitioned to an online company in 2000.
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Early history
Action Envelope was founded in 1971 in the Queens borough of New York City, New York, by Ken Newman. After his death, the company would be run by his wife, CEO Sharon Newman, and their son, company president Seth Newman. The company was incorporated in 1976.
Prior to moving online it was a smaller company than its competitors, focusing on selling directly to consumers instead of wholesale. The company launched its first website in 2000, and by 2001 was selling directly to consumers, corporations, organizations, and to resellers. This resulted in the company's revenues growing by 15 times over the next decade. When the company moved from a local business to an Internet-based business, it changed from a company with 200 customers in the New York area, to over 250,000 customers across the US.
Transition to new domain name
The company overhauled its website ActionEnvelope.com in 2007, as it saw revenues grow from $9.1 million in 2006 to $10.5 million in 2007.
In 2010, the company officially changed its name from Action Envelope to Envelopes.com, transitioning from its older website ActionEnvelope.com. Envelopes.com was officially launched on September 8, 2010, after a six-year negotiation for the domain name. Up until this point it had already been bringing in more than $12 million in revenues per year. The transition took about four months and cost over $300,000 launch the new site.
The company also expanded its product line. Product line changes were largely based on tracking incidents where potential clients would call the company to ask if it sold a particular item that was not on the company's product list, and moving into new markets according to demand. In order to not lose potential customers from changes in the company's search engine rankings, the company has kept Envelopes.com and ActionEnvelope.com operational, with plans to merge the two in the future.