WB Mason - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

W.B. Mason is a privately held large office supply

Office Supply

Office Supply is a New Wave band consisting of three keyboardists. The band has successfully released their debut album Work in Progress, on the independent record label Toaster Records on April 30, 2006...

contract retailer that competes with Staples, OfficeMax

OfficeMax

OfficeMax , is an American office supplies retailer that was founded in 1988 and is headquartered in Naperville, Illinois.-History:On April 1, 1988, OfficeMax was founded in Cleveland, Ohio, by Bob Hurwitz and Michael Feuer. Hurwitz served as executive chairman and chief executive officer and Feuer...

, and Office Depot

Office Depot

Office Depot is a supplier of office products and provides many services. The company's selection of brand name office supplies includes business machines, computers, computer software and office furniture, while its business services encompass copying, printing, document reproduction, shipping,...

. W.B. Mason primarily serves the New England

New England

New England is a region in the northeastern corner of the United States consisting of the six states of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut...

and Mid-Atlantic

Mid-Atlantic States

The Mid-Atlantic states, also called middle Atlantic states or simply the mid Atlantic, form a region of the United States generally located between New England and the South...

areas of the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

. They have 29 distribution centers, roughly 1800 employees , 770 sales representatives, 376 delivery trucks (leased from Ryder

Ryder

Ryder System, Inc. , or Ryder, is an American-based provider of transportation and supply chain management products, and is especially known for its fleet of rental trucks. Ryder specializes in fleet management, supply chain management and dedicated contracted carriage. Ryder operates in North...

), and over 150,000 customers. It is one of the largest private office products dealers in the USA and one of the largest customers of United Stationers

United Stationers

United Stationers is the largest wholesale distributor of business products in North America, with sales in of nearly $5 billion. In 2011, it ranked 467 out of the Fortune 500 companies...

Business facts

W.B. Mason is the "Official Office Supplier" to the Baltimore Orioles

Baltimore Orioles

The Baltimore Orioles are a professional baseball team based in Baltimore, Maryland in the United States. They are a member of the Eastern Division of Major League Baseball's American League. One of the American League's eight charter franchises in 1901, it spent its first year as a major league...

, the Boston Red Sox

Boston Red Sox

The Boston Red Sox are a professional baseball team based in Boston, Massachusetts, and a member of Major League Baseball’s American League Eastern Division. Founded in as one of the American League's eight charter franchises, the Red Sox's home ballpark has been Fenway Park since . The "Red Sox"...

, the Boston Bruins

Boston Bruins

The Boston Bruins are a professional ice hockey team based in Boston, Massachusetts, USA. They are members of the Northeast Division of the Eastern Conference of the National Hockey League . The team has been in existence since 1924, and is the league's third-oldest team and its oldest in the...

, the Philadelphia Phillies

Philadelphia Phillies

The Philadelphia Phillies are a Major League Baseball team. They are the oldest continuous, one-name, one-city franchise in all of professional American sports, dating to 1883. The Phillies are a member of the Eastern Division of Major League Baseball's National League...

, and the New York Yankees

New York Yankees

The New York Yankees are a professional baseball team based in the The Bronx, New York. They compete in Major League Baseball in the American League's East Division...

. They sponsor the post-game show after Red Sox games on NESN, the Yankees postgame show on YES

YES Network

The Yankees Entertainment and Sports Network is a New York City-based, regional cable television channel; it broadcasts a variety of sports events, with an emphasis on New York Yankees baseball games, and New Jersey Nets basketball games. YES made its debut on March 19, 2002...

, and the two-hour condensed replay of Yankee games on the YES Network

YES Network

. W.B. Mason also has its corporate logo prominently displayed in all four teams' home ballparks: Oriole Park at Camden Yards

Oriole Park at Camden Yards

Oriole Park at Camden Yards is a Major League Baseball ballpark located in Baltimore, Maryland. Home field of the Baltimore Orioles, it is the first of the "retro" major league ballparks constructed during the 1990s and early 2000s, and remains one of the most highly praised. The park was...

in Baltimore, Citizens Bank Park

Citizens Bank Park

Citizens Bank Park is a 43,647-seat baseball park in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, part of the South Philadelphia Sports Complex, and home of the Philadelphia Phillies. Citizens Bank Park opened on April 3, 2004, and hosted its first regular season baseball game on April 12 of the same year, with the...

in Philadelphia, Yankee Stadium

Yankee Stadium

Yankee Stadium was a stadium located in The Bronx in New York City, New York. It was the home ballpark of the New York Yankees from 1923 to 1973 and from 1976 to 2008. The stadium hosted 6,581 Yankees regular season home games during its 85-year history. It was also the former home of the New York...

in The Bronx, and on the Green Monster

Green Monster

The Green Monster is a popular nickname for the thirty-seven foot , two-inch high left field wall at Fenway Park, home to the Boston Red Sox baseball team...

at Fenway Park

Fenway Park

Fenway Park is a baseball park near Kenmore Square in Boston, Massachusetts. Located at 4 Yawkey Way, it has served as the home ballpark of the Boston Red Sox baseball club since it opened in 1912, and is the oldest Major League Baseball stadium currently in use. It is one of two "classic"...

in Boston.

Along with those sponsorships, W.B. Mason assisted with funding a brand new sports complex at Stonehill College

Stonehill College

Stonehill College is a private Roman Catholic college located in Easton, Massachusetts, United States, founded in 1948. Situated in North Easton, Massachusetts, a suburban community of 23,329 people, Stonehill is located south of Boston on a campus, the original estate of Frederick Lothrop Ames...

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
The Office (US TV series)
The Office is an American comedy television series broadcast by NBC. An adaptation of the original BBC series of the same name, it depicts the everyday lives of office employees in the Scranton, Pennsylvania, branch of the fictional Dunder Mifflin Paper Company...

. Both companies have a similar market, product, and history.

History

It was founded in 1898 by William Betts Mason in Brockton, Massachusetts

Brockton, Massachusetts

Brockton is a city in Plymouth County, Massachusetts, United States; the population was 93,810 in the 2010 Census. Brockton, along with Plymouth, are the county seats of Plymouth County...

, where its headquarters are still located.

William B. Mason was born in Auckland

Auckland

The Auckland metropolitan area , in the North Island of New Zealand, is the largest and most populous urban area in the country with residents, percent of the country's population. Auckland also has the largest Polynesian population of any city in the world...

, New Zealand

New Zealand

New Zealand is an island country in the south-western Pacific Ocean comprising two main landmasses and numerous smaller islands. The country is situated some east of Australia across the Tasman Sea, and roughly south of the Pacific island nations of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga...

in 1865 and when still a youth, he immigrated to the United States and settled in Brockton, Massachusetts. He worked in the printing trade.

The company began as a rubber stamp

Rubber stamp

Rubber stamping, also called stamping, is a craft in which some type of ink made of dye or pigment is applied to an image or pattern that has been carved, molded, laser engraved or vulcanized, onto a sheet of rubber. The rubber is often mounted onto a more stable object such as a wood, brick or an...

company, which thrived in the Brockton shoe

Shoe

A shoe is an item of footwear intended to protect and comfort the human foot while doing various activities. Shoes are also used as an item of decoration. The design of shoes has varied enormously through time and from culture to culture, with appearance originally being tied to function...

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.

Advertising

Their best known slogan is "Who But W. B. Mason". Their logo features two U.S. flags

Flag of the United States

The national flag of the United States of America consists of thirteen equal horizontal stripes of red alternating with white, with a blue rectangle in the canton bearing fifty small, white, five-pointed stars arranged in nine offset horizontal rows of six stars alternating with rows...

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.

Business facts

History

Advertising

Further reading