“Brepols diaries offer the ultimate consumer experience; they are made from innovative materials, are well designed and offer tangible surprises,” says Operations Director Willem Vangeel (left). Right, Jorge Denaux, Project Engineer for Muller Martini in Belgium.

Just as many newspapers are experiencing falling circulation figures due to the relentless proliferation of new types of media, you would expect the time-honored paper diary to soon be rendered a thing of the past, given the increasing prominence of Palm, Organizer and Outlook etc.  But far from it: The success of the Belgian diary and personal organizer specialist Brepols shows that with clever marketing concepts, the traditional hardcover and softcover diary has by no means served its time.

If the slogan for the latest range of diaries from Brepols sounds far from hip, it's because it does in fact come from an ancient language: “Tempus fugit” is the motto for the company's latest leather-bound range. Borrowed from Latin, it alludes to the proverb “Tempus fugit amor manet” – “Time flies, but love endures.” At Brepols, it could well be changed to: “Time flies, but the diary endures.”

Operations Director Willem Vangeel has a very simple explanation for the overwhelming success of the company in a seemingly declining business segment: “Our diaries offer the ultimate consumer experience; they are made from innovative materials, are well designed and offer tangible surprises.” For example, the very feminine Raffi range launched in 2008 won the ISPA award in the “Social Stationery” category at this year's Paperworld in Frankfurt, the leading international trade fair for paper, office supplies and stationery.

This year, the family company founded in 1793 and now in its seventh generation will sell ten million diaries (which equates to 85% of its sales), making it the undisputed leader in this segment in the Benelux countries and France. Diaries account for a large percentage of the company's sales, with the rest coming from hardcover and thread-sewn softcover books.

Diaries account for 85% of Brepols' sales.

Two Diamant MC 60s and One Bolero
The company, which employees around 220 people, was restructured six years ago and now focuses solely on finishing. For its hardcover products, it invested in two Diamant MC 60 booklines with joint forming and pressing machines, BLSD pass-through stackers, film wrapping machines and BLSD 650 end stackers. These were put into operation at the beginning of this year to replace three booklines from another manufacturer. According to Willem Vangeel, the high level of automation was what spoke in favor of the Muller Martini solution: “Due to the diversity of our products, we work with relatively small print runs – 1,500 copies on average. This means we have to change over our booklines a dozen times a day, which is very simple on the Diamant. Not only this, but the quality of the very first copy is exceptional. However, as we regularly have high-volume runs too, we also need a robust system.”

Willem Vangeel explains that the new Bolero, which has been in operation since March 2009, was purchased for the same fundamental reasons. The binder features a 12-station gathering machine, book block feeder, endsheet tipper, cooling tower, splitting saw, Orbit three-knife trimmer and CB 18 counter stacker with electrostatic blocking and palletizer. “Just press a couple of buttons and it's ready to go. This is particularly important for our operators, because we have skipped two or three generations of machine with the Bolero.”