Where It All Began

The Blair Companies were established in 1959 when organization founder Donald Devorris returned to Altoona to run a small electrical contracting business, Blair Electric Service Company. A few years earlier his father, Mike, had purchased 50% ownership in the company. With the help of dedicated employees, the business grew towards large industrial jobs, wiring everything from coal prep facilities in Wyoming to bauxite mines in the West Indies.

Several years later Don bought out his partner and began further expansion. Around 1968, he acquired Tel-Power, another small electrical company. In 1971, one of Blair Electric's office workers introduced Don to one of the employees, Steve Pellegrine. Steve was a young sign maker who fabricated and painted signs in his garage. Steve had spent ten years as an apprentice under experienced sign manufacturers in Pennsylvania and Florida. Recognizing some common business goals, Steve and Don successfully founded Blair Sign Company.

Building a Solid Base

Soon after Blair Sign was established, Steve and Don began designing, building, and installing signs in stores in numerous malls. One of the first and most impressive contracts was with General Nutrition Centers. This experience paved a path to contracts with many major retailers and developers. Another major contract was in 1966 with Sheetz Convenience Stores, Inc. Steve built the signs for the very first store and nearly every store since then has signs built by Blair. Between 1975 and 1980, Blair grew by 50% a year as shopping malls spread rapidly across the country.

One of the early Blair accounts was Electronics Boutique, for which Blair built high-quality wood-encased cabinet signs. Because of Blair's reputation for delivering high-quality products on time, they were given the opportunity to manufacture additional display cases for Electronics Boutique. By the early 1980's, the company had expanded into another division, Blair Fixtures & Millwork, which began producing millwork for a variety of Blair's sign accounts.

Tremendous Growth Continues

At the end of 1989, Don's son Philip started working to computerize Blair Sign's production control. After three years of continued effort, Philip left New York City and began working for Blair full-time in Altoona, PA.

From the mid 1980's to mid 1990's Blair fabricated nearly 30,000 sets of Texaco letters, Blair's first true production account. Major programs followed, which included Chrysler, Chevron Oil, several large POP sign runs for the Japanese market, Budweiser, Coors, and Fuji, and even a project with Philip Morris to build over 100 enormous backlit billboards. As the staff grew, Blair was able to handle even larger programs. More manufacturing capacity was added in 1994, then more sales people to keep the buildings full. By 1997, Blair Sign's operations were spread out over six locations, and Blair Fixtures had moved five times.

Finally, after 30 years of "making do" with a hodge-podge of buildings, in 1997 Blair bought the 150,000 square foot building on Kissell Avenue, Altoona, PA and moved the entire sign operation under one roof for the first time in seventeen years. Our consolidation into one building enabled us to focus our attention on providing even better service to our customers. Four years later, in 2001, Blair Fixtures moved into its own first-class facility on Industrial Park Drive in Altoona.

Through all of the changes and moves, at least three dozen of the people that originally built Blair Electric in the 1960's, Blair Sign in the 1970's, and Blair Fixtures in the 1980's are still with the company. Many of the first employees worked here until they retired, and quite a few of them still have family working for the company today.