Thanks to everyone who has submitted ideas to upgrade our current products! There seems to be a couple common themes from all of you that we are working to address. For the most part, we have been able to address them for all our products! They are:
1) "Where are the tabbed pages so I can find the month I'm looking for quickly"?
We have explored adding tabbed page dividers between the months but, the bottom line is, they are too expensive (not to mention they have to be "hand inserted" between each month in each planner) and our goal is to keep our planners affordable for everyone. Our new planners all include colored tabs along the edge of the pages that show when the planner is closed. On our custom color coded planners, we were able to make the tabs colored. On our black and white versions, we did the best we could in using different screens of black and white to accomplish the same thing. It's a good solution to this concern. If you still want something more "visual" the best solution we have found is to buy the small colored 3M "stick on" page dividers, cut them in half, label them and install them for each month staggered down the Month View page edges about 1/8" apart. One packet ($3.00) is enough to do about 10 planners. They are very durable and easily solve this issue.
2) "My cover is starting to get dog eared, can you make it more durable"?
Done! All our products (excluding our Pocket Planners) now include a very durable "see through" poly cover...so that should be the end of that! We've also rounded the corners of both the covers and the inside pages which should make them even less susceptible to wear and tear. We also changed from our Wire O metal binding to a plastic spiral binding for greater durability and this also helps in being able to turn the planner open on itself for writing. As we've said, firefighters destroy anything you give them...we're a great test market for durability!
On our smaller order "Symbol System" planners, we're now having all the covers laminated for greater durability.
3) "I want to use the leather binder I already have, do you just have page inserts"?
At this time, we don't. We created our planner to be a stand alone product. However, for those of you with 6" x 9" or 8" x 10" six or seven ring binder covers, the existing hole punches will line up with the snap rings. All you need to do is snip the binding and insert the pages into your binder. If you have a 3 ring binder, the top and bottom holes do align but, you have to enlarge the center hole with a hole punch to make it work...Sorry gang, we've looked at adding the additional hole punches to accommodate all the ring configurations out there but then, we'd have the problem of the pages potentially tearing out of the binding. If you have a portfolio style cover (with no snap rings) you just need to insert our planners covers into the sleeves of your portfolio cover and you're good to go!
These seem to be the most common comments we've received and we've already made changes in an attempt to address most! Our goal at FIREDAYZ is to make the best, most useful and durable product available for our profession.
As we mentioned before, we've had a lot of other ideas but they all come down to cost. If we built the planner we wanted to for you guys with all the bells and whistles, it would just be too expensive! We're trying to find that "balance" in making the best planner we can while keeping your cost down. As always, we're constantly looking for ways to make our products better so please keep your suggestions coming, we do value your input!!
Thanks for supporting FIREDAYZ!
Be safe