National Pen opens Ja operations

CHIEF EXECUTIVE Officer of National Pen Peter Kelly is expecting to hire 60 additional persons in the coming weeks to boost his labour pool to 235 after just two months of operation in Jamaica.

Speaking recently at the official launch of National Pen Jamaica, the Irish firm’s first Caribbean operation located at the Montego Bay Free Zone, Kelly lauded the agencies involved in facilitating a smooth transition in setting up shop and reported that his company is already reaping success since it started in August.

“I think we are feeling confident, and even recently, we had some good news where we agreed that we would expand the operation here by a further 60 people, probably in the next 12 weeks,” he said. “Well done to the people here, for it has really proven that Jamaica has been so successful that that has allowed us to make that decision to expand.”

Kelly added, “It’s been a wonderful success so far. I think, roughly, after nine weeks of operations, some of the operations are very similar to or on par with the US, even after the nine-week period.”

A subsidiary of Cimpress, the parent company of international branding firm Vistaprint, the company started its international operations 32 years ago and currently covers 21 markets outside of the US and Canada.

“From we originally started, we started as the name says, very much as a pen company. Over the last few years, we became particularly strong in the online market,” added Kelly. We are selling up to 40,000 different promotional products.

“What makes National Pen unique is we are really kind of different than a lot of the competition in the marketplace. We really focus on small to medium-size businesses,” he explains. “So, we don’t target to sell our products to Coca-Cola or Pepsi or companies like that. We go after plumbers, gardening companies, hairdressing salons, and so on. So our target market is very much the small companies.”