Bindery Series – Part 3 of 10
The Best of Bindery
Part 3: The growing and lucrative market for diaries, notebooks and planners
After over 40 years in this business, not
much surprises me. One exception,
however, would be the growing market
for high quality, personalized diaries,
notebooks and planners with digital
embellishments. John Letts produced
the first commercial diary in 1812 in
the UK. Today, Letts of London is a
multinational company supplying over
22 million diaries worldwide! Individuals
from all walks of life, as well as successful
businesses people, use these products.
Corporate printed diaries can reflect a
unified brand. Colourful pocket diaries
make ideal gifts – the list of uses seems
almost endless. Also, the huge choice
of cover materials, along with cutting-edge
digital short-run finishing technology,
offers greatly flexibility to designers –
including affordable and personalized
covers and even custom-printed pages.
You need to look no further than the
Italian company Moleskine as proof of
this phenomenal success. A Moleskine
is a branded diary, notebook, or planner
– and it sold over one billion dollars
worth of books in 2016! That year the
company grew by 20%. Furthermore,
global year-over-year growth for the
notebook market is 4% to 5%. So why,
in the age of tablets and smartphones,
do these classy printed creations remain
so popular? The reasons are somewhat
complex, but the biggest reason is
people’s desire to experience a “tactile
feeling,” plus a need to personally
engage, along with a natural urge to be
creative.
Moleskine
notebooks,
daily diaries and
planners, like the
ruled one you see
here, represent a
billion-dollar
global market.
40 | April 2019 | GRAPHIC ARTS MAGAZINE
The majority of Moleskine books are
hard-covered, smyth sewn (groups of
folded pages called signatures are
stitched together using binder thread),
have ruled or lined pages, include an
elastic closure, come in various sizes,
are usually the same thickness with the
same paper, and have rounded corners.
A visit to any major bookstore and a chat
with the manager will inevitably reveal
that its diary/notebook/planner section
is growing steadily – and the most popular
item is always Moleskine.
Taking advantage of this market
I believe, from everything I’ve seen and
read, that the diary/notebook/planner
market will keep growing. How is this
information useful to a commercial
printer? Remember the old cliché
“imitation is the highest form of flattery.”
Many corporations are now customizing
Moleskine books and/or books from its
competitors. This includes everything
from simply buying a few hundred books
and foil stamping, embossing or debossing
a corporate name on the front cover, to
printing the corporate name on every
page, numbering the pages, colour-
staining the head, foot and face of the
book, replacing the cover to match a
client’s corporate colour, and even
including a coloured envelope in the
back cover – or not.
In my experience, a commercial printer
with a tight budget can produce excep-
tional, high-end diaries, notebooks and
planners with classy tactile and visual
qualities similar to Moleskine or any of
its competitors. For example, you can
buy any number of standard covers
of similar material, then screen print
colours similar to that of Moleskine or
its competitors, if you like. What might
be better is utilizing current “book of
one” technology and state-of-the-art
finishing processes. This will allow you
to foil stamp, emboss, de-boss and add
other special effects that give these
popular products even more value.
Bottom line: diaries, notebooks and
planners are definitely worth investigating
as new, higher-margin revenue streams.
To my knowledge, there are at least six
binderies in Ontario that can produce
these, in addition to other excellent
binderies in provinces across Canada.
Norm Beange, owner of Toronto-based
Specialties Graphic Finishers, has over
40 years of experience and expertise as
a leader in binding and finishing
technology. He can be reached at
[email protected]
graphicartsmag.com