Looking through the Lefax catalogues they seemed to be more up market than Filofax at the time. Although they did also have some cheaper organisers and their own range of inserts.
What happened to Lefax after the buy out by Filofax? Their products seem to have gone out of production. Filofax took over the Lefax shops in London and they eventually closed. The Lefax shop in Paris became a Filofax shop until that also closed recently.
Given the wide range of Filofax organisers from the relatively cheap end of the market to the luxurious end of the market (£20-£250) do you think using the Filofax brand name over the whole range is justified?
Having got the rights to the Lefax name would it not make sense for Filofax to use the Lefax name on the more expensive models? May be charge a little extra for them if the quality was improved with more quality control checks? Looking at the catalogues I'm sure some of us would love to see some of the Lefax models return.
Does anyone know a more detailed history of the Lefax company?
What do you think?
My recollection of 30+!years ago is that few people mourned its’ passing. Filofax and Lefax were perceived as interchangeable brands, offering virtually identical products, with similar names and both regarded as overpriced when the market (at that time) was awash with generic organisers at less than half the cost. Many of us were wedded to the productivity ranges such as Time Manager and Time Systems, thought of as less “yuppy” and paper-based organisers in general were giving way to the exciting new electronic organisers such as Psion and Sharp. They were what most young managers aspired to at that time!
ReplyDeleteI had never heard of the brand Lefax "in the wild" as it were - only on websites such as these. The Filofax range of products is now very wide, also in terms of quality, so other branding might be seen as sensible, but the Filofax brand is so strong I can't really see a business case for dropping it for any range. It has become synonymous with organisers like Hoover, Sellotape, Velcro etc. have in their markets. I think they'd lose sales if they rebranded any part of their range. You see this in Germany on second hand sites. People search for "Filofax" to find any organiser, and organisers offered for sale almost always add the text "wie Filofax" ("like Filofax") to capture these searches.
ReplyDeleteI have several Lefax organisers bought from their shop in Covent Garden. My favourite is a special edition snakeskin slim personal, I seem to remember that it was almost double the price of a similar Filofax. It is beautiful and still in use today.
ReplyDeleteFilofax would probably have benefited from making Lefax into their more luxury brand offering, as commentators had suggested was the plan. It would have allowed them to remain more competitive on price within the main Filofax brand. But I suspect it was too late for that strategy to work, as Filofax had already lost too much market share by then to the many lower priced imitators.
ReplyDeleteSome history I’d gleaned:
ReplyDelete1984 - London Wood Partners took over Lefax
1988 - Lefax became part of Quarto plc
Could Lefax still be resurrected today?
ReplyDeleteI’d like to think so.
The “Filofax Est.1921” collection from a few years back would have been an opportunity though, so not sure they have an appetite to do it.
Thank you Max for the additional historic information.
DeleteI have literally fallen down a rabbit hole with inquiries regarding the Lefax Co. I love the history behind it and I agree some style should have remained Lefax
ReplyDelete