Stamps.com

Stamps.com Inc.
Public
Traded as NASDAQ: STMP
Industry Business Services
Founded 1998
Headquarters El Segundo, California, U.S.
Key people
 Jim McDermott, Founder
Jeff Green, Founder
Ari Engelberg, Founder
Ken McBride, Chairman & CEO
Kyle Huebner, Co-President & CFO
Jim Bortnak, Co-President and Corporate & Business Development Officer
Products Internet postage, Custom postage stamps, Shipping software
Number of employees
 250[1]
Website www.stamps.com

Stamps.com is an American company that provides Internet-based mailing and shipping services. Stamps.com is a public company and trades on the NASDAQ exchange under the symbol STMP. The company's main offices are located in El Segundo, California.

History

Founded in 1996,[2] Stamps.com was created under the name StampMaster by Jim McDermott, Ari Engelberg and Jeff Green, who at the time were MBA graduate students at UCLA.[3][4] StampMaster was among the first companies to obtain USPS approval for beta testing and introduce Internet postage to the market. The Postal Service began announcing proposals for digital delivery of postage in 1996.[5]

Stamps.com finished its Series A funding in February 1998 with $1.5 million. Series B funding followed in August 1998 with $4.52 million.[6] It had its last round of private financing in February 1999,[7] which generated $30 million[6] from investors including former Postmaster General, Marvin Runyon.[5] The company went public in June of the same year[4][8] and raised $55 million in its IPO.[6] Less than six months after its IPO, the company had its secondary public offering.[7] In August 1999, the Postal Service granted permission for Stamps.com to sell their service nationally.[5] Stamps.com purchased IShip.com, a company which compared prices of shipping services, for $305 million in stock or eight million shares, in October 1999.[9][10]

In 2001, Stamps.com named Ken McBride its CEO.[11] The U.S. Postal Service authorized the first market test of PhotoStamps in 2004.[12] In 2005, the company reported $10.4 million in net income.[11] PhotoStamps was re-launched in May 2005 for another year-long test run.[13] The United States Congress amended a law that prohibited attaching business advertising to postage in January 2006, and lifted the restriction in May of that year, which allowed businesses to use PhotoStamps.[12] In September 2006, the company launched Photo NetStamps, which combined its previous NetStamps product with PhotoStamps. This combination allowed PhotoStamps to be used with exact postage printed from Stamps.com software.[14] By 2008, Stamps.com had over 300,000 customers.[15] The company recorded revenues of $38.6 million in 2012.[11]

By 2013, it had approximately 465,000 registered customers.[2] Stamps.com reported $147.3 million in revenue the following year.[16] It acquired ShipStation, a web-based multi-carrier shipping solution based in Austin, Texas, in June 2014 for $50 million and up to 768,900 shares of stock. ShipStation was founded in 2010 and creates tools to import orders from shopping cart platforms for order fulfillment The acquisition made ShipStation an independent subsidiary of Stamps.com operated by its existing management team.[17] In October that same year, Stamps.com acquired ShipWorks, a multi-carrier shipping software company that integrates with shopping cart platforms, for $22 million. ShipWorks continues to operate as an independent, wholly owned subsidiary.[18]

In March 2015, Stamps.com entered into an agreement to acquire Endicia, another internet postage company, from Newell Rubbermaid for approximately $215 million.[19][20] Endicia's products include the DYMO Stamps and PictureItPostage brands.[19]

On June 20, 2016, Stamps.com announced that it had entered into a definitive agreement to purchase ShippingEasy, Inc., an Austin, Texas-based company which offers web-based multi-carrier shipping software that allows online retailers and e-commerce merchants to organize, process, fulfill and ship their orders. Stamps.com agreed to acquire ShippingEasy for $55 million in cash, as well as performance-linked equity awards of 87,000 shares of Stamps.com's common stock.[21]

Products

Online postage

USPS First Class Package International via stamps.com

Stamps.com's service is a way for small businesses, enterprises and online retailers to print official United States Postal Service stamps and shipping labels with their computer, printer and an Internet connection. Stamps.com sends customers a digital scale to weigh letters and packages to ensure the correct amount of postage is applied to the piece of mail. The amount of postage applied is then deducted from the customer's Stamps.com account. Customers can print postage on envelopes, regular paper or adhesive labels. The system integrates with external address books applications including Outlook and Act!, small business applications such as Microsoft Word and Intuit's QuickBooks, and e-commerce platforms such as eBay and Amazon.com.[22]

PhotoStamps

Stamps.com also offers a product called PhotoStamps that allows customers to upload personal photographs or logos to be printed on real U.S. postage stamps. PhotoStamps are sold as a sheet of 20 postage stamps.[23]

Stamps.com Corporate headquarters. Los Angeles, California.

Controversy

While The Smoking Gun successfully ordered PhotoStamps with controversial images,[24] Stamps.com's current policy prohibits images of world leaders or "any material that is vintage in appearance or depicts images from an older era."[25]

Stamps.com's cancellation process requires the customer to call a representative to cancel. Customers are charged their monthly subscription fees at the end of the month, and thus a customer is charged a final payment when canceling the month-to-month service.[26] In 2009, Stamps.com settled a class-action lawsuit in which the plaintiffs alleged unreasonable hold times when they attempted to cancel service over the phone, which resulted in delayed closing of their accounts.

See also

References

  1. ↑ "Stamps.com - Company Info: Company Overview". Investor.stamps.com. Retrieved May 12, 2015.
  2. 1 2 "Plenty Of Potential For Stamps.com Even After Run Up". Forbes. June 3, 2013. Retrieved May 12, 2015.
  3. ↑ Debora Vrana (February 18, 1999). "Stamps.com Raises $30 Million". LA Times. Retrieved July 11, 2016.
  4. 1 2 Karen Kaplan (June 21, 1999). "Stamps.com Online Postage Due, but First an IPO". LA Times. Retrieved May 12, 2015.
  5. 1 2 3 Melody Petersen (August 10, 1999). "Buying Stamps Can Now Mean Just a Trip to the Computer". The New York Times. Retrieved May 12, 2015.
  6. 1 2 3 "Company description". Built in Los Angeles. Retrieved May 12, 2015.
  7. 1 2 Peter Gumbel (October 2001). "Mail Ego". Los Angeles Magazine.
  8. ↑ Andy Wang (July 20, 1999). "Stock Watch: Stamps.com Rockets After Office Depot Announcement". ECommerce Times. Retrieved May 12, 2015.
  9. ↑ "Stamps.com to Purchase IShip.com". LA Times. October 26, 1999. Retrieved May 12, 2015.
  10. ↑ "Company News; Stamps.com Agrees to Acquire iShip.com". The New York Times. October 26, 1999. Retrieved May 12, 2015.
  11. 1 2 3 Stuart Pfeifer (March 18, 2013). "Stock spotlight: Stamps.com delivering sales, profit growth". LA Times. Retrieved May 12, 2015.
  12. 1 2 "Your Stamp Here". Bloomberg. September 17, 2006. Retrieved May 12, 2015.
  13. ↑ "Photostamps goes live, again". L.A.Biz. May 17, 2005. Retrieved May 12, 2015.
  14. ↑ "Stamps.com Launches Photo NetStamps". Creative Pro. Retrieved May 12, 2015.
  15. ↑ Armando Roggio (December 22, 2008). "The PeC Review: Stamps.com is A Helpful Tool for Many Merchants". Practical ECommerce. Retrieved May 12, 2015.
  16. ↑ "Stamps.com Inc". CNN. Retrieved May 12, 2015.
  17. ↑ ABBY CALLARD (June 17, 2014). "Stamps.com buys shipping software vendor ShipStation". Internet Retailer. Retrieved May 12, 2015.
  18. ↑ Melissah Yang (October 20, 2014). "Stamps.com Acquires ShipWorks". Los Angeles Business Journal. Retrieved May 12, 2015.
  19. 1 2 "Stamps.com To Buy Online Shipping Firm Endicia For $215 Mln.". Nasdaq. March 24, 2015. Retrieved May 12, 2015.
  20. ↑ Matt Lindner (March 25, 2015). "Stamps.com acquires Endicia for $215 million in cash". Internet Retailer. Retrieved May 12, 2015.
  21. ↑ "Stamps.com to Acquire ShippingEasy". StreetInsider.com. June 20, 2016. Retrieved July 11, 2016.
  22. ↑ Simson L. Garfinkel (December 23, 1999). "Stamp out the postal blues". The Boston Globe. Retrieved May 12, 2015.
  23. ↑ Asha Dave (February 17, 2011). "15-year-old takes stage at NC Jazz Festival". WWayTV. Retrieved May 12, 2015.
  24. ↑ "Stamps Of Approval: Rosenbergs, Milosevic, Lewinsky dress now on official U.S. postage". TheSmokingGun.com. August 31, 2004. Retrieved June 12, 2011.
  25. ↑ "Terms and Conditions". PhotoStamps.com. Retrieved 2014-02-03.
  26. ↑ "Stamps.com". Stamps.com. Retrieved 2014-02-03.
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