RE: Is Aeroplan willing to loose $432 000.... Good question. $432,000 is a drop in the bucket for AImia. Also it was Aeroplan who started to panic that set things off with this CCAA process. So I'm not sure if Aeroplan will support Futura. They, like shareholders, see the debt problems and the high general & admin expenses as hindering future growth.
Saying that, Aeroplan needs resellers who can penetrate the small-medium business category. I see Air Miles is courting samll businesses. The mom and pop merchants have signed on. Corner plumbing shops, family courier services and small businesses not even listed on Air Miles website are joining.
This grassroots nickel and dime approach will add up eventually. Aeroplan has no answer to this, except using resellers to counter Air Miles.
Also I see opportunity for Aimia to go into the US. They are expanding to Brazil, Mexico and China, but there's money to be made next door in the US. There too, the small/medium business category requires attention. Resellers like Futura could fit in. Many companies don't have any loyalty programs andthe coalition type is still relatively untried, as compared to Canada.
Maybe Aeroplan can work with the airlines in the US, especially the Star Alliance members like United, to make inroads into the US market place and form a national coalition type of system. The market is still highly fragmented/regionalized in the US, preventing a coalition based loyalty program to flourish.
But back to Futura. Is it the end? If the debt problems did not exist, there would be plenty of opportunities for growth, even internationally outside Canada and the US as the paragraph below says, "in addition to other markets".
Management believes that the Company’s experience with Aeroplan, coupled with its proprietary technology and knowledge base, position the Company well to expand into the US market successfully, in addition to other markets. The model of aggregating multiple loyalty currencies and bundling them with value added reporting is a unique offering which management believes would be attractive to merchants located internationally. (March 31, 2012. MD&A report)