TWELVE years ago five friends got together in a back room at the head office of the Main Event Entertainment Group (MEEG) in Kingston to discuss how they could impact Jamaica’s economic growth with their creativity.

Well, 12 years later they have developed into Jamaica’s leading creative branding company and they are not only growing, but have continued to impact the local economy with their vision and creativity.

Meeting Iprint Digital Limited’s (IDL) chairman, Stephen Steele, is almost quixotic, except when he details the company’s rapid growth, since that back room meeting, to become the leading creative brand with its recent acquisition of National Outdoor Advertising Limited (NOA), the 50-year-old former giant of local outdoor advertising and business promotion solutions.

“We started in a back room at Main Event with one printer. Recently we had five, but now, with the acquisition of NOA, we have 10 printers. We started with a staff of four people and now, with the acquisition, we have 120 people,” Steele boasted as he explained his company’s amazing ascendancy into the loft in such a short time.

He chairs a board which includes Main Event’s chief executive officer, Solomon Sharpe, who started promoting events during his senior years at Campion College in St Andrew, sharpened those skills during his tenure in marketing at D&G/Red Stripe and later founded the Main Event Entertainment Group.

Steele, Sharpe and their three other friends who articulated the vision which led to the establishment of Iprint – Managing Director Katrina Kelly, Logistics director Sheldon Barnes and director Richard Bair, who also serves as chief operations officer at MEEG ­— still control Iprint.

You don’t have to search far to find their creativity on display, whether in large format prints including vehicle wraps; custom fabrications such as lit signs; outdoor advertising, including digital boards at the Transport Centre in Half-Way-Tree and billboards on Knutsford Boulevard in New Kingston; and booth rental at venues like the recent Expo Jamaica at the National Arena.

Steele points out that Inprint’s bosses were always determined not to settle for being an average print or signage company.

So, in the course of their journey, they expanded their inventory to include all the necessities for providing the First-World digital advertising service desired by its clientele, with the best pricing possible and in the most efficient timeline.

Additionally, they have found new opportunities to grow through leveraging control of high visibility spaces in the Corporate Area, such as in Half-Way-Tree, New Kingston, Liguanea and Manor Park, with plans for islandwide expansion to solidify their spot as the top provider in digital advertising.

They have also developed other avenues for leading growth through the deployment and construction of the quick assembly booths (Expo-Sure Expo Solutions) and providing pipe and drape equipment for some events.

Steele is so emotionally charged by the development, he sounds like a motivator as he passionately explains the road he travelled to his current position and the commitment of he and his colleagues to making the company the most sought after partner in the Main Event chain.

He remembered that after they moved to their current address at Westminster Road, he was confronted with the prevailing view that small companies like Iprint would find it difficult to survive in an environment in which businesses in Jamaica have gone under almost every decade since independence, and were likely do so again in the 21st century. Then he had a visit from a friend who insisted that:

“They said businesses went under in the 1970s, in the 1980s and the 1990s and will go under again in the 2000s. But people were still making money every one of those decades. So you decide which side you want to be on and follow that path.”

“I never forgot that. When we had our little meeting about starting this business, we discussed the figures and decided to get started. In ‘two-twos’ we were being recruited to do a trade show. So, sometimes you can’t make people’s ignorance of something stop you from achieving your goal,” he pointed out.

“I am from a modest, modest background, and when you live most of your life against the grain, you don’t watch those things … none at all. From there we started printing, then we started fabrications, and it just started mushrooming and we just went with it,” he explained.

Steele, an accomplished businessman himself, is happy too that, with the promotion of the Junior Market of the stock exchange as a means of companies acquiring the funds they need to boost their growth and development, Iprint might soon be able to travel that route to acquire additional capital for expansion.

He is even more impressed with the recent announcement by Industry Minister Audley Shaw that the Government is looking at a third tier of the Jamaica Stock Exchange, the Micro Market, to assist companies up to $50 million per annum to boost expansion.

“That is incredible for businesses. Very good for business. Once you are able to grow, and certainly you have to be systemised, it helps you to become a better business and continue to grow as a better business,” he stated.

“There is no private company now that is increasing market share that is not considering the stock exchange. What the stock exchange does is that it encourages transparency, and transparency encourages support. Once you get over the first hurdle, often you meet economic pressures, and you will need to invest capital and give the revenues a chance to breathe. Revenue is like a plant: If you plant it and as soon as it starts to grow you start chopping, because you need food, you are denying it a chance to really grow, and that is what it needs,” he added.

Steele also commented on the support new, growing companies need from initiatives like the business incubators which, he says, offers the kind of mentorship that small and young companies need.

“Most small businesses, when you start you are the delivery man, the accountant, the receptionist; you are every single thing at the start. So you need the mentoring. It’s like the Internet. The Internet has everything you need, you just need to know how to access it,” he suggested.

Steele admits that there are still challenges facing Iprint, for example, being without enough real estate to put up as many signs as they could produce, when other companies have thousands of signs on their real estate. But, he believes it is a challenge Iprint can and will overcome during the ensuing months.