When a group of investors begin to investigate a promising prospect, one of the first things on the checklist of items to be researched is the “competition”. Let’s suppose for an instant that the investors were looking into a pizza chain. Naturally they’d want to see who’s already servicing the area, how many locations there are, what type of delivery vehicles are employed, etc. etc.
In fact, in very few segments of the business world is competition “not a problem”. Yet there are indeed times when a “niche” is encountered, and often enough the investors are quite excited about it. History shows us that companies that are “first movers” in a particular niche often dominate that niche market for long periods of time, and with substantial success.
Yet a familiar problem with some niche, or “one of a kind” type businesses, appears to be that the niche is so small that the market isn’t large enough to make a profitable foray into it feasibly. There is nothing substantially terrific about being the dominant company in a niche type sector that is so small, the returns aren’t worth the outlays.
But what if your group of investors does indeed stumble upon a niche business, yet one that services tens of thousands of people at the same time? What if the servicing of that market is so vital, so important, that it’s at times a literal matter of “life or death?” Then, what if the barriers to entry into that business were so steep, that only one company had the only true recipe for success? That would indeed be an interesting company. Enter Tactical Air Defense Services, which is a publicly traded company listed under the symbol TADF. This company is positioning itself to ultimately dominate several very interesting and vital niche markets, all at the very same time.
In the summer of 2007, California wildfires had wreaked havoc on the very peoples that lived there. Temperatures had soared to 110 degrees, and rainfall had fallen to almost nothing, turning tens of thousands of acres of woodlands into a tinder box. The Box ignited, and in just one weekend, more than 1,200 firefighters in Northern California’s Henry W. Coe State Park battled an 11,000-acre wildfire while to the south, in the Angeles National Forest, a four-day-old fire about 10 miles east of Santa Clarita grew to 2,100 acres. Firefighters were exhausted, some working around the clock for days. In separate fires, hundreds of homes went up in flames.
Tactical Air Defense Services is aligning itself to be a large part of the answer to such disasters. The company realized that the biggest lack of defenses that communities faced was not having a safe fire fighting supertanker aircraft that could disperse thousands of gallons of flame retardant or even plain water quickly and safely. In fact, most of the aircraft employed for such tasks were grounded in 2002 after finding that their structure couldn’t stand the stresses involved with such operations, and many succumbed to failure and crashed.
Tactical Air Defense Services seized on this situation by gaining exclusive licensing to the only ILyushin IL-76 firefighting supertanker aircraft ever granted access into the U.S.. The Ilyushin aircraft are the only planes ever built specifically for the purpose of aerial firefighting, and are recognized as far superior to any other aircraft in existence for this purpose. The IL-76 is recognized as the most effective fire fighting aircraft in the world, and the praise in the international press for the IL-76 as the savior of disastrous fires in Indonesia, Bulgaria, Russia, and Greece, is well-documented.
The ILyushin aircraft are dedicated water-bombers that are capable of quickly and efficiently disbursing large quantities of water or fire retardant to defeat the mind boggling damage from extensive forest fires anywhere that they might propagate. With rising temperatures and the courtesy of widespread global warming, the National weather service has declared that the violent fires such as seen in the summer of 2007 are going to become more frequent.
The interest in TADF’s airborne firefighting tactics from State and Federal Agencies has been intense. Experienced firefighters understand the immense benefit of having an aerial firefighting unit, capable of Slow flight and accurate dispersal of its payload. TADF is in the process of securing long term exclusive leasing not only on one, but on four of these supertankers. The effects will be staggering. As an example, four IL-76,s flying in slow formation over a raging fire can emit 72,000 gallons of water, spraying an area a mile and a half long and over a thousand yards wide. Chances are good that the future of wild fire fighting has been changed positively and permanently.
Considering that this is only one Niche segment of TADF’s business plan, it’s easy to see the implications for growth, demand, and success. Uncompromising focus on a particular need has yielded a tremendous answer to a savage problem. TADF and its investors will be well compensated for such intuitive thinking.
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