Page 18 - Marketing Times v1

provides seminars such as the Comanche Pilot Pro ciency Program and holds clinics to educate new owners about their aircraft.
Because the planes are no longer manufactured, ICS is constantly facing the challenge of declining memberships
due to attrition of aircraft and aging pilots. A demand still exists for ICS today because the Comanche was such a popular aircraft in its day and still loved by many enthusiasts. It remains an exceptionally well-built, corrosion-proof aircraft. Yet, numbers will inevitably drop over time due to the attrition of existing aircraft. The society focuses on keeping numbers as high as possible for as long as possible to serve those who require their services.
When the organization was founded in 1973, one year after production ceased, there were 7,000 members. Don Nelson, former ICS treasurer, was one of the rst 200 members who joined the rst year after training for his
commercial license in a Comanche 250. He remembers that when he started working for ICS in 2002, membership numbers – and the treasury – were declining. At that time, ICS had an of ce in Oklahoma City and published the Comanche Flyer magazine on their own. But this was increasingly hard to maintain as numbers and revenue continued to drop.
The current webmaster, Dave Fitzgerald, was the president of ICS when the organization realized it couldn’t afford to have their own of ce space if they wanted to serve members to the best of their abilities. There was no way to get around it: in-
house publishing was too expensive, and if something didn’t change it could even pose a threat to the organization’s existence. Change is always hard, and it was a dif cult transition for the organization. “People resisted the move, but it was too expensive not to. ICS was running up debt,” Fitzgerald explains. ICS began looking for a way to outsource their
18 Traverse City Marketing Times • Fall 2014
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