The company was founded in 1897 and started out selling rubber stamps and stencils for the Brockton shoe industry.

W. B. Mason has over 60 distribution centers and leases over 1,000 delivery trucks from Ryder, servicing more than 300,000 businesses across the United States.

[4][5] On February 25, 1897, The American Stationer reported that William Betts Mason "has opened an office in the City Block at Brockton, Mass."

[citation needed] In 1963, Kovner sold the company to his daughter and son-in-law, Helen and Joseph Greene.

The slogan was later combined with a portrait of William Betts Mason to form their current corporate logo.

Under Meehan, the company focused on local service, personalized sales, and free delivery.

[14] In 2020, amid the COVID-19 pandemic, W. B. Mason began delivering its office products to homes, a service it had declined to pursue in the past.

CEO Meehan told The Wall Street Journal logistics and costs had previously prevented the move.

In 1872 his family moved to Brockton, at the time known as North Bridgewater, to live with Janet's brother Arthur J.C. Bettridge.

In December 1905, Mason married his second wife, Marcena D. Horton of Bristol, Rhode Island.

Mason sang around Brockton in the Gerrish Male Barbershop Quartet, and was a member of the Brockton-based Paul Revere Lodge of Freemasons.

[23] In June 2017 W. B. Mason announced a $10 million donation to the Leo J. Meehan School of Business at Stonehill College in Easton, a few miles from Brockton.

It houses Stonehill's accounting, finance, international business, management, marketing, economics and healthcare administration programs.

[27] In 2017 W. B. Mason donated the John, Steven, and Caryll Greene Cancer Center at Brockton Hospital.

[29] W. B. Mason has over 60 distribution centers in the United States, and provides nationwide delivery services to its customers.

[citation needed] In October 2018, the company was sued for trademark infringement by Bloomington, Minnesota-based Dairy Queen — owned by Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway in Omaha, Nebraska and doing business as American Dairy Queen Corp.[30] — over using the term "Blizzard" and logo for its private-label bottled water.