Halsey & Griffith Inc. began as a 168-square-foot stationery store in downtown West Palm Beach in 1921, and this month the family-owned company that has reinvented itself several times is celebrating the iconic business's 100th anniversary. 

Founded by John L. Griffith and William L. Halsey, the company has persevered in the face of hurricanes, the Great Depression, World War II, a Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 1991 and a 1993 restructuring, when it shifted its focus from retail to the copier business. 

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Longtime area residents will recall its heyday from the 1960s to the 1980s, when its store at 313 Datura St. was the place to go for office, art and engineering supplies, cameras and photographic supplies, books, gifts and greeting cards. 

“Plus it was air-conditioned! Everyone in West Palm Beach shopped at Halsey & Griffith,” the company’s president, Robert L. “Robbie” Siemon, 72, said. James Waugh, Robert’s grandfather, bought Halsey & Griffith from the founders in 1948. 

Halsey’s, as it was often called, became a regional chain with 11 stores from Vero Beach to Boca Raton. In the 1980s, Halsey & Griffith was one of the area’s top office suppliers, employing 175 people and reporting annual revenue of $12.5 million. 

Many changes have occurred since then. In 2016, the company rebranded itself as HGi Technologies, after it moved away from selling office furniture and supplies. Now, Siemon said, It’s a South Florida leader in the copier business, selling and servicing copiers, printers, mailing systems and document-management systems. 

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With an office in West Palm Beach and a distribution center in Miami Gardens near the Golden Glades Interchange, the now 45-employee company serves customers in Palm Beach, Broward and Miami-Dade counties. 

This year, HGi started a new company under the Halsey & Griffith umbrella, HGi Technology Services, a full-service IT company. “We think our IT Services will be a very important part of our business in the future,” Siemon said. 

In January, Siemon’s son Blake, 48, who started working full-time at the company in 1999, will become its president, although Robert Siemon will continue to work there. Robert’s brother James manages the financial end of the business. The two have led the company since 1989 after their late father, Robert T. “Bob” Siemon, retired. 

Blake Siemon, a graduate of Forest Hill High School and Florida Atlantic University, worked at Halsey & Griffith’s warehouse on Old Okeechobee Road when he was in high school. 

“A lot of kids from Forest Hill worked there and showed up after hours to pull orders that were ready for delivery at 5 a.m. the next morning,” Blake Siemon said. 

The expansion into IT services focuses on customer service and good advice for small to medium-sized businesses. 

“For a few years we have been helping people with efficiencies, software and electronic workflow and content management. It hasn’t been a huge part of our business. We are taking that expertise and going into IT services,” Blake said.

One of the most difficult periods occurred after the first office supply superstore opened in Boca Raton in 1988. A West Palm Beach location quickly followed. Many mom-and-pop office supply stores across the nation went out of business. 

“The superstores forced us to change our focus when I took over the business in 1989. We knew we had to diversify. We didn’t get out of the office supply business until 2018. We downsized drastically to three locations,” Siemon said. 

Halsey & Griffith became an authorized Ricoh copier dealer. They previously had sold the copiers, but unfortunately the change did not occur fast enough, and the company was forced to file for bankruptcy. By January 1993, however, it had paid off its debt and could once again buy on credit from vendors. 

“At that point I made the decision to go to Miami and run the copier division,” Robert Siemon said. “Before that I had an outside person. I commuted on Tri-Rail for 30 years, until the pandemic.” 

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A new era had begun, and growth continued in the copier division, putting the company back on solid footing. The Siemons attribute the company’s longevity to a service-oriented way of doing business that goes back to founders Halsey and Griffith and was continued under their family’s ownership. 

“Blake represents the fourth generation of the Waugh/Siemon family to serve in a leadership role in the company,” Robert said. “This is something we are very proud of because only 3 percent of family businesses are still in business in the fourth generation.” 

“Halsey & Griffith has experienced many ups and downs, but we have been in business for 100 years,” Siemon said. “Halsey & Griffith has been a big part of the West Palm Beach community for the past 100 years and has employed more than 1,000 people.” 

The company was founded during the real estate boom of the 1920s when Griffith and Halsey, like thousands of others, came to West Palm Beach to make their fortunes. Griffith recognized the need for a stationery store and opened a 12-by-14-foot store on what was Poinsettia Avenue.  

Within a year, Griffith moved the store to a larger location at 220 S. Dixie Highway, and then to the Guaranty Building. At seven stories, it was one of West Palm Beach’s first “skyscrapers.” Built it 1922, it is now on the National Register of Historic Places and is located at the corner of South Olive Avenue and Datura Street. 

During this time, Halsey approached Griffith and offered to put up some money to become a partner, founding the Halsey & Griffith firm in 1923. In 1925, the downtown store was moved to 313 Datura St., a property Halsey owned. The building initially had three storefronts on the ground floor. Halsey’s occupied one and rented the other two. The top two floors were the Halsey Hotel. 

The early years were not always easy. The Great Miami Hurricane hit on Sept. 11, 1926, and halted the Florida land boom. Then on Sept. 6, 1928, the Okeechobee Hurricane struck West Palm Beach and caused the Lake Okeechobee dike to fail. More than 2,500 people died in the hurricane and many of them drowned in the Glades area around the lake. 

Next came the stock market crash of 1929, and the business limped along for the next 15 or so years. 

During World War II, manufacturing restrictions on items not related to the war hampered supplies. It wasn’t until after the war ended those supplies began to flow and business began to improve. In 1955, Griffith and Halsey died within six months of each other. 

But nationwide, times were good, and the retail business began to expand, with the first branch store opening in 1957. The final new branch debuted in Port St. Lucie in 1990.

“In addition to selling office supplies, and furniture, we also sold art supplies,” the late Margaret Siemon wrote in a company history. “The famous Black artists, the Highwaymen, purchased or traded their art for paint and canvases over the years.” 

While typewriters and carbon paper are no longer used, the Siemons emphasize that their mission has remained the same as a trustworthy partner for Florida businesses. 

“What fulfills me is that there is a legacy, not just that of my family, but the good name of the company that we get to carry on and apply to different things,” Blake Siemon said. “We are a relic of a bygone era as to how we approach business. That doesn’t make us inconsequential. People still want first-class service.”