Futura Rewards (Kids Futures) was an attempt to compete with Aeroplan and Air Miles back in 2004-2007. (Ubika Research Report, Nov 14, 2007)
"Quote from Page 6: Historically, Futura operated as a national loyalty operator attempting to build a coalition of Tier 1 national retailers. to enable it to compete with Aeroplan and Air Miles. Finding difficulty penetrating the crowded and mature big business category, they began to sell their program to smaller non-chain, local retailers, Tier 3.
Seems like some progress was made with the small and medium business (SMB) category in 2007. It is one month after the Ubika report that the first co-founder Byron Holland left. I don;t exactly know what they tried (hub and spoke idea), but by Feb 2009, they were reselling Aeroplan miles.
What we see is a pattern of abandoning an idea and trying another, Then abandoning the another idea and becoming a reseller. A steady downward progression with each of the 3 steps over a coarse of 8 years.
Save for the education of kids (RESP), CARP, university alumni, etc. All nice and the sort, but not profitable. Sadly, all that's left now, is breakage revenue from unredeemed Futura Reward points.
I really believed they had something with the auto dealers/service category. they had been granted the rights from Aeroplan and Points.com to pursue these categories. But the company's debt and admin expenses did them in.
Co-founders don't often leave without reason. To be with family ok, to pursue another business ok, even to retire, ok. But if Futura were profitable, growing company with a good future, there would be a chance both would have stayed.
Now hiring people and consultants to clean up the accumulated troubles of 8 years?