Some DayRunner/DayTimer thoughts

Owing to geography, I don’t get an opportunity to visit Staples too often. It’s a four-hour trek to St. John’s, the capital of the province and the location of most of the superstores. However, I’m currently in town to give workshops and, while running errands one evening, could not resist stopping into Staples to peruse their DayRunner and Day Timer templates. The situation is quite different than it was a few years ago.

Once upon a time, the local Staples had a tremendous number of templates, including plenty of project management ones. Now, nearly half of the templates are calendars of some type (often with natural landscapes and crudely-drawn images of fairies trailing ribbons). I guess this speaks to the main use of paper planners nowadays. Of the other templates, there were only the following: to-do list, contacts/address book, plastic zip pouch, business card holders, slash folders, mileage forms, “Today” snap-in, and receipts (with pouch). That was it, aside from the $6 CDN ($4 USD) 30-page notepads. Prices all around were quite expensive, ranging from 20 cents to $4 per page. Ouch.

Browsing through the DayRunners and Day Timers on the shelves at least showed me a few more templates. Most planners come with 2-6 page samples of various templates, including some project management ones. (Obviously, you’re to visit their website if you want more.) DayRunner has two different levels nowadays: regular and “Pro”. The regular templates seem a little flimsier, have a very basic design, and not many fields. The Pro ones have a slightly more elaborate design, some gold and grey colouring, more project management options, and more fields (rather akin to the ones I offer). The only “loose” Pro templates I could really find to purchase were the calendar and address forms.

Just a few years ago, Staples had many dozens of templates, pretty well 80% of those now available from the planner websites. Nowadays, with the advent of PDAs, Outlook and other PIMs, there’s obviously much fewer people using planners, and thus far less of a market of the forms. The store is now only stocking the common templates that people would regularly demand. Hence, the planner websites now better serve this “niche” market.

Initially I was quite surprised at the demand for my templates, but now that I’ve had the opportunity to visit the province’s largest office supply store, I realise why so many people are downloading them. In a way, I feel like I’m helping to supply a necessary fix to a dying breed, like selling butter churners to back-to-earthers. I only hope I’m not hastening the demise of paper planner -based companies –which obviously derive a fairly high mark-up on forms– by giving my package away for free.