Twenty-One Years of the ACS

recent years for so much impressive cricket research. Page has been the ACS agent in Australia for many years. He emigrated from England as a boy, later becoming a schoolteacher and these days is one of Australia's largest booksellers. During 1985 the ACS was forced to take a conscious and significant decision to become more commercially minded and the next 18 months saw radical changes in several areas. Not everyone welcomed the new thinking. It stemmed from the metamorphosis which followed an enlarged publishing programme and rising costs - rather than any innate ambition to becomea profit making organisation.Forseveral years finances at times were only superficially healthy, with the threat of potential losses seldom far away. A £2,000-plus working deficit was reported to the 1985 AGM and this figure would rise in the future unless revenue was increased. Hints that the ACS had to be on its guard against over-reaching itself were evident from the preliminary publishing schedule for the next two years. This showed that in addition to existing stock, the ACS mightsoon be handlingsome21,000booklets, with a retail value close to £50,000. As a first step the committee decided to convert the Journal into a semi-commercial booklet and to make it available to non-members.Though the Journal was re-vamped and greater topicality was introduced, the sales figures never rose as much as had been hoped and it was not long before a full-scale sales campaign was planned for all other ACS publications. Until this point the committee had always been chary of going down this particular road. It was a concept which could lose potential membership subscriptions; discount would have to be given to retail outlets; and distribution could prove another problem. A working party, comprising mostly the officers, continued to study ways to increase income and the decision that proved more telling than any other was that John Featherstone, the vice-chairman,should fill a newly created post of marketing manager. In the next five years Featherstone gradually infiltrated ACS booklets into nearly all the new club shops, which had started to burgeon on county grounds. He also inaugurated a wide variety of marketing ploys. These included a membership recruitment drive and a discountsystem on some stock, both aimed at bringing in greater liquid assets. Important parts were also played by Mrs Scaife and David Harvey, the treasurer, in a widespread campaign and the adverse financial tide was slowly turned back.Since 1987 the ACS has avoided a loss every year. Featherstone(born 1938)must have driven countless thousands of miles in his various ACS roles and certainly more than any other member of the committee, which he joined in 1982. He did not seek re-election in 1993 by which time he felt that he had explored every outlet that the marketing manager's role had to offer. Featherstone's crucial part in the 24