Day-Timer - About Day-Timers: Company History

Company History

The quest for more hours in a day goes back to the beginning of time. However, the fact remains that there will never be more than 24 hours in a day. The only practical response to this search is not to make more time, but to better manage the time we have. Since the beginnings of Day-Timer, a Division of ACCO Brands in 1947, the company has empowered its customers with the necessary skills and tools to manage time and cope with information and change. Day-Timers is a pioneer in the field of time management and provides the tools for people in all walks of life to dramatically increase their personal effectiveness, efficiency, and productivity. Because the company realizes that change is the only constant in life, Day-Timers has always responded to the needs of its customers, creating new products to meet their changing lifestyles.

The Day-Timer story began with a manual printing press in a chicken coop in a small town near Allentown, Pennsylvania. Warren Dorney, a newspaperman and entrepreneur bought the press to print labels for his business, and to give his three young sons something constructive to do. The boys soon started to earn money, printing small orders for name cards and raffle tickets. In 1940, two of Warren's sons, Bob and Bill, started their first mail-order business -- printing birthday calendars for churches, and in 1942 they registered Dorney Printing Co. as a business. In 1948, the first building to house the printing business was erected ( in the Dorney's backyard -- where it's still in use today).

In 1947 Morris Perkin, a local attorney, realized that he needed more information about his work day than could be provided by a simple appointment calendar. So he designed his own system, which he called Lawyer's Day. This time-record book of calendar pages combined all the functions of: an appointment book, a tickler reminder system, a detailed time record, a diary and record of all work done and activities, and a work planner and organizer. It was Perkin's personal solution to time management.

By 1952 Perkin needed a commercial establishment to handle the printing of Lawyer's Day for him, so he approached the Dorneys -- and changed all of their lives. As Bob Dorney recalls it: "For a while we just printed it for him -- initially he only had about 700 customers. But he really struck a nerve, because Lawyer's Day went over very well. As the subscription list grew, we began shipping it for him, then marketing it, too. Eventually, it got to be a little more than he wanted to handle, and after dotting the i's and crossing the t's, we merged." They sealed the agreement with a handshake, and the partnership quickly became a successful venture. The diaries were sold using the theme: "Lawyers who keep time earn 42% more than non-time keepers." Results of a Bar Association study revealed that lawyers who used the system earned 50% more than those who didn't. Lawyer's Day was a revolutionary concept that was soon being used by 20% of the lawyers in the country.

Commerce and trade were booming in the early '50s, and the economy began to flourish. Calendars in use at that time were primitive, consisting of dates on simple pages or blocks of dates on a page, with little room for appointments, and no space to record details of meetings or transactions. Because of the vitality of the economy and the increase in "action," businesspeople had outgrown these basic calendars -- they needed more room to keep track of more obligations, appointments, expenses, and details. After conducting extensive market research, the Dorney brothers discovered that the Lawyer's Day system would also be effective for professionals other than lawyers.

Thus, Lawyer's Day inspired the creation of Accountant's Day, Engineer's Day, and other "Days." Each edition used the same basic page format, with separate instructions and title pages to fit the specific profession.

The business continued to grow, and in the 1960s an additional plant operation opened in Canada and a franchise distributor in London, England. The time planning system known by various specific professional names became generic for all professions, and was dubbed the "Day-Timer system." In 1962, a new First Class Post Office was built in East Texas, PA (home of Dorney Printing) to accommodate the large volume of mail generated by Day-Timers. In 1970 the company name, Day-Timer, Inc. was registered, and it was at this time that Day-Timers produced its first color mail-order catalog .

The pace of life was quickening and more and more people were looking for ways to manage what appeared to be a diminishing number of hours per day. Day-Timers struggled to keep up with order fulfillment, and the Dorneys soon realized that they would have to find capital to fund their future growth. So in 1972, Beatrice Foods purchased Day-Timers. Beatrice aided in funding for additional equipment and machinery. Day-Timers became a self-contained manufacturer, and grew at a yearly rate of 15 to 25%.

In the late 1970s, noted trainer Charles Hobbs, who advocated that time management was the key to a healthy and balanced life, discovered the Day-Timer planner. He used samples of the product in his time management seminars in which he showed attendees how to set goals, prioritize and record their activities, and make better use of their days. In the late 1980s, Day-Timers bought out Hobbs' part of the business, acquired the rights to Time Power, a series of books and tapes related to time management, and entered the field of time management seminars. The 1980s were years that saw many changes in the company. Responding to customer requests, the company added many new page designs to the original 2-page-per-day, including: the 1-page-per-day, 2-page-per-week, and 2-page-per-month, as well as a number of different sizes. And distribution expanded to include markets in Australia and New Zealand. In 1988 American Brands, Inc. acquired Day-Timers and placed the company in their office products division, under the umbrella of ACCO World Corporation.

In 1994 Day-Timers entered into a joint venture with Kensington, an ACCO USA Company, to create Day-Timer Technologies. This offshoot developed an award-winning personal software program, Day-Timer Organizer 98, which uses Day-Timer paper planner formats and prints to Day-Timer pages.

In the mid-90s Day-Timer management made a key decision to be in whatever distribution channel customers wanted to find Day-Timer products. In 1994, Day-Timers began a transformation from a strictly mail-order company to a company that also distributes product through contract stationers and office superstores. Day-Timer products can now be found at Staples, Office Depot, and Office Max, as well as computer and software retail outlets. Leading commercial contract dealers and wholesalers also sell Day-Timer products.

Among these companies are Boise Cascade, U.S. Office Products, B T Office Products, Corporate Express, Office Depot Commercial, Staples Commercial, United Stationers, and S.P. Richards.

Since 1995, Day-Timers has successfully sold its product line on its website store at www.daytimer.com, and its entire catalog is now available on the Web.

In the last few years of the century, Day-Timers, anticipating the technological demands of the new millennium, introduced three new software products: Day-Timer HomeLife, the first home organization software; Day-Timer Organizer 2000, an updated version of Day-Timer Organizer 98; and Day-Timer PaperMaker for Palm OS, a graphical printer driver that lets Palm OS users print directly from their handheld organizer to the familiar look of Day-Timer pages. The company also entered into a marketing and product development venture with Sharp Electronics, and introduced the Sharp Wizard Oz series bundled with Day-Timer Organizer software.

In keeping with the company's renewed commitment to treating all customers as individuals, Day-Timers ventured into almost uncharted waters with the launch of Day-Timer Digital ? a free Web-based calendar service that combines all of a user's personal, professional, and social events in one place and delivers them to the user, based specifically on his/her interests. And, with the acquisition of digital printing technology, Day-Timers was now able to make a long-time dream a reality and create a totally personalized planner for each individual consumer, known as Personal Pages.

Meanwhile, the company continued to branch out globally, with the introduction of German, French, and Spanish editions of the Day-Timer planner, as well as establishing a presence among commercial dealers and resellers in Europe, Australia, and New Zealand.

Day-Timers celebrated its Golden Anniversary in 1997: 50 years of leadership in helping make millions of people's lives easier. We invented the modern personal organizer, and half a century later we're still at the cutting edge.

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