I didn't do a post because I feared that it might become a bit of a political rant and we don't do politics on Philofaxy! The reasons for the closure of the business are detailed here.
It was very sad news of course and David had the courtesy to alert me to the announcement a few days before it was published.
Philofaxy will of course continue to support William Hannah users as much as possible in to the future. Our diary inserts and files will of course work with disc bound notebooks as well as they do with ring bound. People will just need a different punch.
And now back to our schedule programme....
This year as you know I've been swapping between my various personal size organisers every week or two. The other night my wife watched me do the swap into the Filofax Eton.
I've got the page and contents swap down to a fine art now, as fast as a pit-stop for Peter Perfect. Alison commented 'You have done that a few times' !! "Yepp" It takes longer to decide on which one to use next and to put away the previous one!
Do you change organisers frequently or with the seasons?
And as usual it is Friday so please feel free to discuss anything related to ring bound organisers or disc-bound notebooks/planners...
I wonder if William Hannah's drop in customers is down to them being blacklisted by some web safety and filter products? Certainly I cannot reach the site from certain networks because they are classed as an adult website and blocked.
ReplyDeleteWhat 'certain networks' are you referring to? A lot of older filtering systems had to be set up by a human and they would often give false positives such as place names like 'Scunthorpe' this town in northern England would trip up such systems because of the word within.
DeleteI think the main reason for the drop in sales in the US is down to the import tariffs on average 10-15% added to the price.
I cannot and have never been able to access the website from my android phone in UK connected either through mobile internet or WiFi. The security protocols on the site aren't sufficiently up to date, so access is blocked.
DeleteI think the problem is with your browser settings on your Android phone.
DeleteI've accessed the site with stock Safari, no issues and a heavily locked down version of Firefox that baulks at any privacy issues etc and that too was fine.
Have you tried a desktop browser, more up to date than your phone may be?
Android, Chrome here. No problem accessing WHL website. Never had an issue on windows/Firefox, either.
DeleteI ran a blocked site report and both Plusnet and EE are shown to be blocking them. These reports are never comprehensive in my experience and as each service run their own data it is likely that other networks are doing the same.
DeleteOf course if you have turned the pornography filter off there would be no problems accessing the site, but as most people leave them set it would prevent a number of customers from accessing. Google penalise this heavily in SEO results.
The announcement states "On top of that, there has been a reduction in UK sales of around 30%. I can’t see any major reason for this..."
It appears there is a reason.
The reduction in sales in UK is down to a consumer confidence report in late 2025 that showed consumer confidence increasing in the under 25 age group, but decreasing sharply with the over 55 years old age group and as most of the sales are to older people the sales reduced accordingly.
Deletehttps://www.deloitte.com/uk/en/Industries/consumer/research/consumer-tracker.html
I‘m quite like you in this point, Steve. I change my organiser after a week or two. So I can justify my little collection, too.
ReplyDeleteI change with the seasons, which I really enjoy. I also have a permanent travel filo, and one that sits next to my comfy chair and holds what I call "diversions": notes on books to read and books I am reading, movies/ TV to watch, music to listen to.
DeleteSteve, thank you for David Round's closure notice (hadn't spotted it). Very sad, really nice well made products with very good customer service. For me personally as time has moved forward the switch (for now at least) to printing my own undated weekly layouts on your or variations of your layouts onto Tomoe River 52gsm paper (can't seem to find 68gsm looses leaf A4) has meant using ring bound rather than discbound format as the 52gsm paper can't stand being taken and put back more than relatively few times before the punch holes curl or tear.
ReplyDeleteIt's sad to hear this announcement.
ReplyDelete