After weeks of employing mascots dressed in full black at various locations across Jamaica as a marketing strategy, local technology and stationery distributor Innovative Systems Limited unveiled the latest addition to its suite of products — branded legal and letter-size printing papers.

Standing in silence and bearing the signs “I am white” and “I am smooth” in Half-Way-Tree, Liguanea and New Kingston in the Corporate Area, and Montego Bay in St James, the statuesque mascots used the signs to advertise features of the new product.

“We had an extended campaign where we had a mascot called ‘Paapah Don’ … at various locations. We had one at Sovereign, we had one at Half-Way-Tree, New Kingston and we had one at Montego Bay,” Garth Walker, executive chairman of Innovative Systems, told the Jamaica Observer Monday at the company’s outlet in the Sovereign Centre in Liguanea, St Andrew.

Like the mascots, the letter-size and legal-size reams are covered in black packaging but bear the Innovative Systems brand. The new products will be sold at all the company’s locations; however, the company is also targeting the reseller’s market.

Walker noted, though, that the success of the paper business line is not hinged on third-party sales from stationery and office supplies companies. Instead, the Innovative Systems sales team will be targeting all sectors of the paper market such as schools, homes and businesses — from micro enterprises to large corporations.

“That’s [one of] the most vastly moved products,” he said adding: “Paper is an expense line item that everybody has, so we’re not going to market to say, ‘Please, buy paper’. You’re already buying paper. We’re just saying, ‘Give us some of your business,” he explained.

“Our team is working assiduously to get into as many locations as possible, provided the price is competitive to what persons out there are buying now on the retail side,” he added.

With over $20 million in investments, the new products are white-labelled and sold to Innovative Systems from a Trinidad and Tobago-based supplier consequent on a partnership deal struck last year. That investment includes packaging and shipping of the products to Jamaica.

Walker revealed that there are other partnerships in the pipeline, but those will become market-ready as the company gets closer to opening its ‘superstore’ on Constant Spring Road in St Andrew.

The company is also eyeing expansion to Portmore, St Catherine; Morant Bay, St Thomas; Montego Bay, St James, and Ocho Rios, St Ann.

Innovative Systems Limited was acquired by Growth Tech, led by Walker and his partners Ryan Reid and Neil Lawrence. For over three decades, starting in 1987, the Chang family operated the business as a distributor of technology and office supplies, including home and business computers, laptops, accessories, speakers and printers.