How Del Boy's fall cost us jobs

The ultimate entrepreneur standing at the bar with a Filofax in one hand and a glass of white wine spritzer in the other.

As he leant towards the bar of a City winery, staring at a pair of attractive women, he fell flat on the floor.

Realising the barman had raised the flap just seconds before, the dishevelled Cockney came to his feet and said: "Come on Trigger, we're leaving."

His pretensions pricked, the audience of millions at home roared in sympathetic laughter.

Broadcast in 1988, it was the moment when that singular decade dared to laugh at itself, when this aspirational Everyman figure made a complete fool of himself.

From then on icons like Ron and Nancy, Dynasty, Michael Douglas, Canary Wharf and, of course, Yuppies (the young, upwardly-mobile professionals of City folklore) were passe.

Filofax was at the centre of Del Boy's fall then and, 12 years later, it seems to have taken a less spectacular and humorous one of its own.

The company is shedding 130 jobs at Burgess Hill and Littlehampton by June.

It claims high interest rates in Britain and a strong pound have made exporting difficult.

Most of the work done at Burgess Hill and Littlehampton will go to the Far East, where labour costs are cheaper.

Despite the bad news for Sussex, Christopher Brace, group managing director of Filofax, thinks his product now has a stable position in the market.

He said: "It's a cost-driven exercise. There are tremendous pressures on the cost of our products from retailers.

"It's very difficult to make things in Britain and keep the products at competitive prices.

"I passionately don't believe that the palmtop organiser is having a major impact on our sales. It's just that there is greater competition all round.

"As a company it's up to us to find ways of making the Filofax more relevant so we can keep up with what's going on in the marketplace.

"There are users all over the world and they don't have this same idea as some in this country that it's a Yuppie toy or whatever.

"It's not a Yuppie product at all now. At one stage it was a bit like mobile phones five years ago.

"In the Eighties some people bought our product because it made them look rich.

"It's survived because it's high quality. We are still a very healthy company.

"We have invested around half-a-million-pounds in the two Sussex plants since we took them over in 1995.

"Sadly everything has gone against them. Sterling has soared, which makes employment here very expensive.

"We've just had to go elsewhere and it's very sad."

Filofax, invented surprisingly early in 1921, continues to re-invent itself.

It has just launched the 2021, a special millennium edition.

Made in an egg shape from modern textiles and Italian leather, it is described as "a contemporary interpretation of the classic Filofax organiser".

At £150 it's unlikely to take the mass market by storm the way its predecessors did more than a decade ago, though.

The competitors are lining up. Computer giant Psion has become a byword for electronic organisers the way Filofax once did for paper ones.

Even Filofax's piped telephone music seems to mock past glories.

It plays Crockett's Tune, Jan Hammer's wistful instrumental tribute to the hero of Miami Vice, that most Eighties of Eighties TV shows.

In 1997 Psion sold 300,000 palmtop computers in the UK. A year later it had reached 800,000.

A 300 per cent growth in sales is the sort of growth Filofax knew at its peak.

Psion has a motto: "Successful companies like Psion continually innovate and adapt to their changing environment to create new business opportunities."

Mr Brace of Filofax thinks the old and new can co-exist in a crowded market, because of their different qualities.

He said: "There are people using both computers and traditional personal organisers. People still need to carry their information on something that's easily accessible and paper-based.

"If you want to access lots of complicated data very quickly then a computer is better. But if it's stuff like names and addresses you are after, it's better on paper."

They may be selling at a steady rate internationally, but Darren Garrett, who teaches product design at Northbrook College, Worthing, said: "Filofaxes are hardly the height of fashion anymore.

"Their day came in the Eighties. It was like power dressing and the stock market boom.

"Often our possessions mirror the spirit of the times and Filofaxes have had their's.

"But what's happened is that, with the passing of time, a lot of people have come to see them as design classics.

"In a way it's a bit like mobile phones. You can get them now with Union Jacks all over them or paint them or whatever you like.

"In our business it's been said that there's a difference between fashion and style. Filofax was tacky as fashion but it's functional as style.

"You don't see people getting them out in the street anymore to make a statement, do you? The company might be leaving Sussex, but I think its product has arrived in other ways.

"The palmtop computers have never really caught on as fashion or style. I don't think they ever will."

Del Boy and his band of Eighties entrepreneurs have finally gone upmarket, it seems.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.