FILE THIS UNDER ‘OLD SCHOOL’
Beloved by yuppies, Filofax was the iphone of its day
It's been hailed as the paper equivalent of the iphone, and it's nothing if not a survivor.
Rising to prominence in an age of rapaciousness best forgotten by many, it has overcome snide stereotyping, market meltdowns, fashion fails and the unstoppable march of technology.
The Filofax — which unlike its digital doppelgänger requires no charging and does not plead incessantly to be upgraded — has refused to be written off since first appearing in 1921.
Canadian engineer John Clinton Parker, working out of Philadelphia, originated the concept. Seeking a simpler way for engineers to cart around their bulky technical handbooks, his “Lefax” was a deceptively simple ring-binder system that was infinitely flexible. Its appeal soon spread to the clergy, to journalists, to lawyers, to doctors and to the military. Indeed, it was a British army colonel named Disney who championed its appeal across the Atlantic, leading to the importation of Lefaxes by the London-based stationers Norman & Hill.
A temporary secretary at the firm, Grace Scurr, is credited with coining the term Filofax — a “file of facts.” The name was trademarked in 1930, and Grace would go on to much bigger things at the firm.
That said, her fact files could easily have been filed under “underappreciated” if not for an immodest British marketing executive named David Collischon, who almost single-handedly transformed what the Financial Times had dismissed as a “souped-up diary” into the must-have accessory of the Gordon Gekko greed-is-good 1980s.
Collischon reimagined the Filofax as the ultimate yuppie signifier. Its bulging leather-bound products plopped onto a restaurant table were the big-hair decade's equivalent of peacocking your latest gadget.
Known as Mr. Filofax, he would later buy the rights to the company and once said, with considerable prescience if not humility: “In years to come, people will look back at Filofax as one of the great marketing phenomena of the 1980s.”
It “appeals to the man on the move,” Collischon pointed out, yet it was the movers of haute couture, not high-end note-taking, that put the Filofax on the style map — and justified its often inflated price tag.
When fashion guru Paul Smith placed a black Filofax in his Covent Garden shop window in London, alongside a Montblanc pen, “it became a style icon whose cool was indisputably established,” The Scotsman noted.
At the height of its popularity, the personal organizer was being sold in more than 40 countries and Norman & Hill — renamed simply Filofax in 1992 — soared to more than £30 million ($51 million) in value. It featured in prestigious stores across the globe, from Harrods in London to Bloomingdales in New York.
Expanding rapidly, Filofax reached 6.5 million sales per year in the mid-1980s and by 1987 its products were being sold through 1,250 stores in Britain alone.
Beyond its yuppie-bling cachet, the Filofax was a low-tech precursor to the just-google-it world of smartphones two decades later. Through its myriad inserts, showoff suits could arrange lunch with a flip through their diaries — even suggesting a hot spot curated by professional researchers — before totting it up in their expenses page. Handy map inserts ensured they were never lost.
Indeed, the Filofax paper inserts — estimated at one point to number in excess of a thousand — were the apps of their day, tempting devotees with ever-imaginative offerings.
Expectant women, for example, were pitched the “Pregfax” insert. Designed to help those trying to start a family, it boasted a gestation guide, diet tips and a nursery planner. For the upwardly mobile, meanwhile, there were wine lists, travel guides and cheat sheets for activities such as windsurfing, birdwatching and golfing.
Celebrity fans included Lady Diana Spencer, later the Princess of Wales, one of the achingly acquisitive “Sloane Rangers” who set the tone for upper-class Londoners during the 1980s.
Others included filmmakers Steven Spielberg and Woody Allen, who is said to have organized his pre-digital life with no fewer than 20 Filofaxes, and actress Diane Keaton, who was reported by the New York Times to be so keen on her Filofax she suggested an option that resonates in today's smartphone holders — a detachable insert for tucking away credit cards and cash.
Luxe brands such as Louis Vuitton, Gucci and Mulberry created their own versions, keen to capitalize on the Kardashian effect of the time, while cheaper knock-offs catered to the lower end of the market. Yet the Filofax reigned supreme, much as the smartphone market of the 2010s was ruled by Apple's iphone.
No amount of slick marketing nor insightful inserts could halt the inevitable march of technology, though. The first Palmpilot electronic organizers began stealing a page from Filofax, and by the time of the Blackberry and the iphone it was a full-on heist.
By 1989, Filofax was struggling financially, and by 1990 its stock had tanked as it tried to compete with the bottom end of the market. There was no killer blow, however. Much as newspapers, books and records have prevailed through every digital storm, the Filofax has survived — even spawning its own fan blog, philofaxy.com, “for the love of Filofax.”
Today owned by the U.k.-based Letts Group, and having celebrated its 100th anniversary in 2021, the Filofax in 2024 enters its second century channelling Greta Thunberg rather than Gordon Gekko — heralding a “greener future” with its “eco-friendly” collection comprised of vegan covers and “100 per cent” recycled paper.
Virtue signalling aside, the true staying power of the Filofax can perhaps best be traced back to Grace Scurr, who rose to become chairman of the company but cashed out before its 1980s heyday.
Worried about the firm's vital records being destroyed during the Second World War, she made a point of recording the names of customers and suppliers in two personal organizers she brought home every night.
Her caution proved well-founded: the offices of Norman & Hill were destroyed by a Nazi bomb on Dec. 29, 1940.
“God give me courage and strength to start again,” she wrote in her Filofax diary.
Recalling the incident after her retirement in 1955, Grace said: “I went round and told everyone we were starting again. They all laughed at me, but I was determined to carry on.”
Thanks to her “file of facts,” she and the firm did just that, testament to a secretary's foresight and the enduring legacy of a low-tech style icon.