The Levenger catalog that just dropped included several products that resulted from the collaborative brainstorming that took place in the DiyP community. The reaction has been pretty positive.
I hope that we can keep the momentum and take this enthusiasm back into the forums to develop more ideas. Now that the DiyP members have seen that co-creation works, I’m anxious to see sparks fly in our next brainstorm.
The value of listening to customers lies not simply in learning about past events, but instead becomes a vital part of strategic planning when your most passionate customers are invited to the table.
Levenger’s decision to leave the outside brand pen business and innovate notetaking with our own line of writing instruments, the True Writer, created a ripple of debate between many customers. They might not all agree with the decision, but their passion indicates they care about the success of the brand. This link shows how this passion can be cultivated into a powerful tool by inviting our customers to build the new brand with us.
Shris from DiyPlanner.com has posted some exquisite notebooks she made using both Rollabind and Levenger’s Circa discs. The variety of sizes and colors reflect the variety of functions rather well.
We are trying something new over at DiyPlanner.com to see if Levenger can give back to the community via a contest for template submissions.
I’m pretty excited to see how the experiment unfolds. The prize for the highest rated submission is a Card Wallet Writer and a Walletini [-how's that for a ubiquitous capture device]
I’m not entirely sure what to do with this yet, but there is now a Virtual CircaPDA in Second Life. 
Listening to some of the folks on DiyPlanner.com and elsewhere, I realized that the actual function of Circa (the perforated pages gripping onto the discs) was sometimes difficult to visualize.
Several times customers have asked me, “So how do you open the rings?”
I thought that by posting this video it might help educate those curious that might not be able to visit a Levenger retail store to test the system first-hand.
I have this strange fascination with card catalogs [the fixtures, hardware, tattered cards, even the bookish smell.]
I’m very compelled by John Blyberg’s automated generator.
