Today they do, but tomorrow? A year? 5 years? Will they have enough customers to drive $20 mil in revenue and support 70 employees as previously mentioned?
People have long memories, and Van's is rapidly harming the reputation they spent decades building. People won't trust a company with a reputation of not taking care of it's customers, that's a hard truth. I'm saying this as a Van's supporter but also a business owner who's seen all sides of the spectrum.
Viking Engines, need I say more?
My opinion is that this won't have that kind of general long term impact. No intention at all to minimize how real this problem is for the people caught up in it, but it's a small subset of the customer base. I was frustrated by really poor performance by Van's during the '20-'22 years and this would be worse. At the same time I also know that a year from now there won't be any LCP to worry about and from a new build/customer perspective it will be in the rearview mirror. The LCP problem is well defined and has been mitigated aside from the affected.
People dream about building these airplanes for years before pulling the trigger. Some finish the airplane then plan and dream another couple years to do it again. Most of those people will see this as little speed bump. I would imagine there are a lot of people just waiting for the dust to settle.