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Stabilo Boss Launches Six New Nature-Colored Highlighters
Stationery company Stabilo released six new colors of their flagship Stabilo Boss highlighters, launching the new products on Friday, April 19 at SM North EDSA’s The Block to much fanfare and hype.
The new Stabilo Boss Original NatureColors, inspired by the increasing popularity of environmental causes, has five nature-related colors in its selection. These colors are Beige, Sienna, Umber, Warm Grey, Earth Green, and Mud Green. The company also added a Black Marker highlighter in their selection for the first time in history.
Regional Brand Manager Lui Kiat Lu said that the company was inspired to pursue these colors by the current market trends of sustainable creation and environmentally-friendly products.
“Actually, we got [the colors] from fashion design and also interior design,” Liu said. “Because […] we want to always stay relevant to our target audience. That’s why we are aware that this is the trend now, so we try to adapt it into our product range as well. So our consumer, our end-user, they would be able to enjoy the trend.”
Environmentally-Friendly Process
As a company, Stabilo is focused on creating environmentally-friendly products, pushing to be carbon- and climate-neutral in the future. Their Stabilo Together program has progressed forward to ensure that each part of the production process uses as much recycled material as possible and can also be recycled in the future.
“The plastic itself, we call it ‘cradle to cradle,’ which means that it is recycled and recyclable,” Regional Marketing Manager MK Leong said. “I know stationery is all about plastics, right? So, then we say, ‘hey, are your products recyclable or are made from recycled [materials]?’ So we are achieving both ways. We take something used, recycle it, and use it for our product. So you do not create virgin plastics.”
Leong estimates that only around 3-4% of the plastic used in new products are ‘virgin,’ or newly-created. She said that this was mostly for stability reasons of the product. As they continue progressing forward with their new technology, less new plastic will be used in the process.
Meanwhile, Head of Regional Sales Chiam Long Thiam said that the company has been utilizing sustainability practices in many other ways. Their largest initiative is the vast utilization of solar panels in their factories and offices in Germany and Malaysia. They have also pushed for greener, non-plastic products on their production line, something which they highlighted in a booth at the event.
“It’s not only now, we started adding it years ago. This is a continual process, so sometimes, at this junction, each company, I would say, they are trying in their effort to chip in their contribution to make a better world to bring to our future generation. Definitely, Stabilo is one of them,” Chiam said.
Showcasing the Uses of Stabilo Products
The Stabilo Boss NatureColors launch event highlighted more than just the new products. It showed the usability of Stabilo products as a whole for people in creative industries. During the event, they showed off four artists who created different works of art using nothing but the Stabilo highlighters and other Stabilo products.
It engendered a crowd to gather outside of the event, marveling over comic book artist Harvey Tolibao creating a Spider-Man drawing from scratch. Illustrator Nelz Yumul also received a reaction from crowds by creating different doodles to fill up a whole page just using the Stabilo Boss NatureColors black highlighter.
Opening Up Creativity
The launch also had two artists from Panday Sining on the side creating portraits and calligraphy on the spot to show the products’ usability. Mall-goers also received paper and sample Stabilo products to create interesting materials and drawings.
MK Leong touched on this strategy during the event, saying that they hope that the new colors will push people to “express themselves more” in art and in other ways.
“You know, highlighters people [used to] say that we only use the fluorescent, those kind of shades, that was what highlighters meant many years back. And then we came out with the pastel range and we realized that that actually ignited more creativity in people. It allows people to go beyond just highlighting. And that is why we say, ‘Hey, we give you pastel now, we’ll give you more than that.’”
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