| Type | Private |
|---|---|
| Industry | office supplies |
| Founded | 1898 |
| Founder(s) | William Betts Mason |
| Headquarters | Brockton, Massachusetts, USA |
| Area served | Northeastern USA |
| Key people | Steve Greene, Chairman Leo J. Meehan, III, President and CEO [1] Joe McConnell, CFO |
| Revenue | $820 million [2] |
| Employees | 1800 [2] |
| Divisions | WhattaBargain! outlet stores [3] W.B. Mason Interiors [4] |
| Website | www.wbmason.com |
W.B. Mason is a privately held large office supply contract retailer that competes with Staples, OfficeMax, and Office Depot. W.B. Mason primarily serves the New England and Mid-Atlantic areas of the United States. They have 29 distribution centers, roughly 1800 employees [2], 770 sales representatives, 376 delivery trucks (leased from Ryder [2]), and over 150,000 customers.[5] It is one of the largest private office products dealers in the USA [6] and one of the largest customers of United Stationers.[7][8]
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W.B. Mason is the "Official Office Supplier" to the Baltimore Orioles, the Boston Red Sox, the Boston Bruins, the Philadelphia Phillies, and the New York Yankees. They sponsor the post-game show after Red Sox games on NESN, the Yankees postgame show on YES, and the two-hour condensed replay of Yankee games on the YES Network. W.B. Mason also has its corporate logo prominently displayed in all four teams' home ballparks: Oriole Park at Camden Yards in Baltimore, Citizens Bank Park in Philadelphia, Yankee Stadium in The Bronx, and on the Green Monster at Fenway Park in Boston.
Along with those sponsorships, W.B. Mason assisted with funding a brand new sports complex at Stonehill College in Easton, MA, and thus reserved naming rights as W.B. Mason Stadium. The special relationship on the collegiate level is due in large part to W.B. Mason's CEO, Leo Meehan, being an alumnus of the institution. A number of W.B. Mason television commercials have used the college as a filming location as well. The current owners live in the Boston area.
The company may be the model for the fictional Dunder Mifflin paper company in the NBC sitcom The Office. Both companies have a similar market, product, and history.[9]
It was founded in 1898 by William Betts Mason in Brockton, Massachusetts, where its headquarters are still located.
William B. Mason was born in Auckland, New Zealand in 1865 and when still a youth, he immigrated to the United States and settled in Brockton, Massachusetts. He worked in the printing trade.[10]
The company began as a rubber stamp company, which thrived in the Brockton shoe industry. A year later, W.B. Mason introduced free delivery, using his horse-drawn wagon with his face painted on the side to cart product around downtown Brockton. In 1987, W.B. Mason became the largest office supplies, office furniture and school supplies company in southeastern Massachusetts.[11]
Their best known slogan is "Who But W. B. Mason". Their logo features two U.S. flags flanking a portrait of W.B. Mason. The flag on the right has 50 stars but the one on the left shows only 45 stars, the July 4, 1896 congifuration; this is because when the company was established in 1898, there were only 45 states.