Cracking the QC codes - Clarification.

There has been a few posts on Facebook recently about the Quality Control codes on the clasps and inside of zip Filofax organisers. These are a three letter code, which as far as we know indicate the year, month and location of manufacture of each item. 

Last year I provided this post to update people: Decoding Quality Control Letters. 

However following on from that post I think we need to clarify how we reached our original conclusions about the codes. 

For that we need to go back just over 10 years to 2012. Back then Filofax were using an external third party company called Slam PR to handle their public relations and press contracts. A Slam PR representative had made a statement about Filofax users that was not appreciated by the Philofaxy readers and multiple bloggers at the time. 

You can read about that here. The original article is not longer available but it can be found using the Web Archive linked here. You will also see that this resulted in an Open Letter to Slam PR by a lot of bloggers, Web Finds - 18 September 2012 is full of links to each blog, not all of them still work. The original letter by David is here again recovered using the Web Archive. 

That flurry of posts did get a reaction from Filofax! I got a phone call from the Head of Marketing at Filofax UK. The phone call was about an hour in length and it was like two long lost friends catching up. At last we had made a connection with someone in the company that understood the passion of the Philofaxy community. 

I was invited to a meeting with people from Filofax to discuss our concerns as well as other issues that had been building up. 

Notes of that meeting are here. Filofax/Philofaxy Meeting - 26 November 2012 - Meeting Notes

As a sidebar to that meeting I got talking to Julia, the Product Development Manager for Filofax. I had lots of questions about curious aspects of the design of Filofax organisers over the years. It is just the sort of person I am!! Julia found it quite amusing that I was asking her all these questions. 

One of my questions was 'Are the three letters on the clasps some form of QC code that dates the organiser?' to which she responded "Yes but you will never work it out"... 'Challenge accepted' !!!

Once I was back in France, I then posted about the outcomes of the meeting and in one of the Facebook groups I posted about the QC letters, we then started to gather together codes from as many organisers as possible to look to see if we could establish the pattern. We were about like the Bletchley Park Code Breakers! If you have enough raw data you can crack any fixed code!

For the next 3-4 years after that meeting we had a very good and close working relationship. I met up with the marketing team at Burgess Hill on a few occasions. They lent me their catalogue archive and that formed the basis of our catalogues page here on Philofaxy, although we have doubled it in size since then.  

Sadly things came to a bit of an abrupt halt after the company was taken over by a US company in 2013 and by 2015 they had made a lot of their staff in the marketing department redundant. 

Julia has since left the company in March 2020, therefore a lot of our links back in to the company are no longer there. 

As many of you have realised the original codes would have only been valid for 26 years, short compared to the life cycle of a lot of organisers. We believe Z would have been 2016. What has happened since then? 

Given that it was no longer secret i.e. we were confident that we had worked out the code. Filofax could have either:

• Restarted the code at A in 2017
• Gone for a random code, as long as they knew what the code was it didn't matter. 

From the codes I've seen shared on line since 2016 it appears to me as that is what they have gone for the random option. 

Additionally it has also been suggested that the codes were only used for Non-Made in UK products. However, on investigating this possibility I came across the Sherwood model that is stamped 'Made in England' and it had the QC codes stamped on the clasp! 

The $64,000,000 question I'm sure you have all been asking, "What is the code?"

A	1991	A	January
B	1992	B	February
C	1993	C	March
D	1994	D	April
E	1995	E	May
F	1996	F	June
G	1997	G	July
H	1998	H	August
I	1999	I	September
J	2000	J	October
K	2001	K	November
L	2002	L	December
M	2003
N	2004
O	2005
P	2006
Q	2007
R	2008
S	2009
T	2010
U	2011
V	2012
W	2013
X	2014
Y	2015
Z	2016

Using my Malden as an example:

It has the code of SIV, if you work on S equalling 2009 which is the year before the Malden was introduced. I indicates the month of September, with V being the location. 

Some people have suggested that the first letter is the location and the third letter is the year. Doing that on the above example V would be 2012, a year after I bought this particular item. 

In a few cases including one item I own reversing the code does make more sense. The Journey Travel Companion with the code KLX that came out in mid-2013 and my review was published in July 2013. K would put it in 2001 where as X puts it as 2014 a year after I receive it. Whilst it is a closer match it's not a perfect one. 

The rest of my code collection seem to follow closely the first letter being the year, although in some cases the first letter and the third letter are very close to each other in the alphabet, if not the same!

In conclusion the code they have used isn't cast in stone it seems that different locations may have reversed the code, may be to give the code a longer life, may be not. 

From the point of view of decoding the codes on your own organisers you have to look at the code and assuming the item was purchased/made before 2016 then you have to consider either the first or third letter as being the year, so knowledge of when the item was purchased is almost essential, if you are the first owner then you have a better chance of a more solid date compared to a previously owned item. 

Unfortunately after 2016 things have gone fairly random, as yet we are still trying to make sense of the codes after 2016. 

Happy Code hunting

Decoding Quality Control Letters

Filofax have been hiding a Quality Control code on their organisers for some years. I think I spotted them several years ago. 

The Head of Design at Filofax UK confirmed that they were used to show the date and location of manufacture and then said 'You will not be able to work it out'.... right I thought.... "Challenge Accepted" !!

Where are these hidden codes? Generally you will find them on the inside of the clasp, close to the cover of the organiser. On zip closure organisers I have found them hidden inside one of the pockets. 

The example above is very easy to read, but on some it is difficult to read because the age of the organiser or the pattern of the grain of the leather. I have sometimes had to check mine with a magnifying glass, given my poor near sight!

Occasionally, you will come across an organiser that doesn't have the code stamped on it anywhere this could mean: 

• The organiser is a pre-production sample
• A review sample
• A prototype
• Or just simply the code got missed off, it doesn't mean it is a fake!

The code is made up of three capital letters signifying the year month and location of manufacture. The latter is very difficult to decode, but the year and month do still provide us with useful information to be able to estimate how old a particular organiser is. 

By examining lots of codes, a group of us on Facebook are fairly certain that the code started being used in 1991 and it looks something like this: 

A	1991	A	January
B	1992	B	February
C	1993	C	March
D	1994	D	April
E	1995	E	May
F	1996	F	June
G	1997	G	July
H	1998	H	August
I	1999	I	September
J	2000	J	October
K	2001	K	November
L	2002	L	December
M	2003
N	2004
O	2005
P	2006
Q	2007
R	2008
S	2009
T	2010
U	2011
V	2012
W	2013
X	2014
Y	2015
Z	2016

Looking through some of my own collection:

A4	Classic	JIV
Deskfax	Richmond	IAL
A5	Belmont	JLP
A5	Chameleon	VAW
A5	Holborn	VCX
A5	Malden	SCW
A5	Malden	SAW
Personal	Belmont	JDP
Personal	Eton	JIT
Personal	Holborn	VIW
Personal	Kensington	MHL
Personal	Malden	SEW
Personal	Malden	SIV
Compact	Holborn	VCX
Slimline	The Journey Travel Companion	KLX
Pocket	Chameleon	VBV
Pocket	Eton	JDS
Pocket	Holborn	VFW
Pocket	Malden	SFW
Pocket	Sandhurst	NEK
Mini	Malden	SBW
M2	Belgravia	IGM

Looking through these for confirmation. The Malden with the code SIV I bought in March 2011, with the Crimson Malden being introduced in 2010, a manufacture date of 2009, this seems about right. 

As you can see I bought it at a very good price! End of the run for that particular colour. 

One oddity in the lettering though is the Journey Travel Companion with the code KLX that came out in mid-2013 and my review was published in July 2013 None of the letters in that code are close to 2013 except X which is 2014, after the release date! 

The codes are used by the Filofax Quality Control department in Dalkeith, they check a random sample of incoming products against their specification and they note the code on their results sheet. 

What happened after 2016? I'm not sure I've not bought any Filofax organisers recently that have a code stamped in them. I have checked them all. It is possible they have adapted the code by reversing it or similar. 

Have you bought a new Filofax after 2016 that has the QC codes clearly shown on it. What are the codes and what is the model and the year you bought it. We might be able to crack the code again!