Company History

Haines Company History

Our Beginnings

Our story began in 1929 when my great-grandfather, William L. Haines, founded Haines & Company in Canton, Ohio. With offices located in the First National Bank Building, and a single employee, the company produced its first publication: the Stark County Legal News.

William L. Haines – Founder of Haines & Company

In 1930, Haines published the Ohio Auto Registration Directory. This numerical listing of auto license numbers showed the owner’s name and address, as well as the make and year of each auto in the state.

In 1932, Haines began producing The Canton Shopping News and the first edition of the Haines Criss+Cross Directory.

By 1938, Haines would devote its full attention to expanding the reach of the Criss+Cross Directory, which grew to cover major cities across the country, including Atlanta, Chicago, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Los Angeles, New Orleans, Rochester, St. Louis, San Diego, San Francisco and others.

As the years passed, my grandfather, William K. Haines, Sr., took over the family business. Then, in 1980, he passed control onto my father, William K. Haines, Jr.

The company saw huge periods of innovation during my father’s time as CEO, including the addition of two new divisions. Americalist (now Haines-Direct) was created to provide direct mail marketing for non-profit organizations. Haines Publishing (now Haines Local Search), was created as our Yellow Page marketing division, spanning throughout Ohio & parts of New York.

How I became President and CEO

Fast forward to 2014, I was living in Salt Lake City and building my career in the start-up tech world. My father’s persistent illness took a turn for the worse forcing me to leave my job and come back to Ohio to help where I could. Two years later, in October of 2016, my father passed away after losing his fight to cancer. I had planned on rejoining the family business at some point in the future; but with my father gone, I knew it was time for me step up.

The company wasn’t thriving when I first started. The print, data, and yellow pages industries have been struggling to cope with technological advances and like many businesses, we had been searching for new ways to adapt, evolve, and survive. But unlike our competitors, I knew we had an edge.

In the two years prior to my father passing, I had been working alongside him at Haines. I had learned all I could from his decades of experience in these three core industries. I had already started designing ways to utilize my start-up and tech experience to forge new paths into the digital marketplace and beyond. So on my first day as CEO, I came with the knowledge of three generations of family leadership, as well as the technical savvy to take our business into the future.

I am proud to be the 4^th generation of the Haines family, and the companies first female CEO. I’m 100% focused on continuing to grow Haines, build world class products and serve our customers. Here’s to the next 90 years!

Where we are today

Customers are a part of our family. They shape our future, our goals, and – most importantly – help us develop products that are tailored to the needs of today’s business.  That’s why we’re committed to rebuilding Haines around a mission, vision, and values that follow true to who we are.

Our Mission: To help our customers make quality connections to empower the growth of their businesses.

Our Vision: To be an invaluable marketing resource that enables organizations to succeed by engaging passion, creativity, and innovation.

Our Values: To promote quality, innovation, integrity, and mutual success in a positive, family first, solution-oriented atmosphere.

These new guidelines will help us offer the highest quality services to our customers, and give them the tools and resources they need to succeed.