PROPELLED by new partnerships, regional expansion, and continued growth across its business, Stationery and Office Supplies (SOS) has set its focus on reaching $2 billion in sales by the end of this financial year.

Total sales for the company during its record 2022 year amounted to $1.75 billion — 56 per cent above that of the prior year. Highlights from that year show its EVOLVE furniture line, some five months after its addition, contributing over $28 million in revenues.

Strong rebound from its Montego Bay branch as a result of the broad reopening of the tourism sector also helped to fuel a 70 per cent uptick in revenues generally.

“Coming off our impressive revenue performance last year, our growth so far for this year has us on pace to cross that, and we are actually hoping to hit the $2 billion mark. With everything we have planned, and all the projects being worked on, we are also looking to have a solid second quarter coming out,” said Allan McDaniel, managing director of SOS, responding to queries from the Jamaica Observer on Monday.

At the end of its historic first quarter, ended March, SOS’s revenue grew 22 per cent above the prior year to total $519 million, representing the highest seen in a quarter, though higher costs led to reduced profits of $94 million.

The performance, the company said, was driven by the continued growth of its SEEK brand, which saw sales move from $15.5 million to almost $25 million, its EVOLVE furniture line increasing sales by 30 per cent, a 48 per cent growth in its document destruction services, and higher demand or increases of some 51 per cent for its home/office fireproof Sentry safes.

Fresh off its recent partnership with Cayman-based Apex Group — a large company which services a wide array of commercial and residential clients in the Cayman Islands —, SOS recently announced that it will soon begin to supply products, mainly from its EVOLVE and IMAGE lines for distribution to that market. This follows an earlier partnership with The Office Authority, which gave it access to sales in Trinidad.

Pursuant to discussions held since the start of this year, SOS, as a result of the new arrangement, will see its first shipment of supplies being sent to Cayman at the end of this month.

“With Cayman being a much smaller island we are hoping to do about four containers, which is somewhere in the region of US$750,000 for the first year, and we are happy with that,” McDaniel told the Business Observer.

Pushing its regional expansion as a key pillar of the company’s growth strategy, the managing director said the current partnerships, and those pending, will further help to drive success for the company which specialises in the sale of high-quality stationery and office furniture.

“By entering into those markets which we didn’t have access to it will only help us to further improve. We believe that, with all the regional expansions that we have been trying to do, and the partnerships we are trying to create, they will definitely help us increase our revenues and to grow the business as we move forward,” McDaniel said.

Indicating that the company is far from being satisfied with where it’s at, McDaniel further spoke to some of the plans on which it is now focused.

“We remain in discussion with other islands, which we can’t share as yet, but based on current progress the plan is to add at least one to two more countries by the end of the year,” he said, noting that following the sale of its Collins Green property SOS also remains on the hunt for new space, with hopes of having larger warehousing space to adequately house its inventory.

“We just took over a new location for rental, doubling on our warehousing capacity in Montego Bay, and we are looking to further build out our warehouse space in Kingston. There are some plans in our pipeline concerning this which we will announce when ready,” McDaniel said.