U.S. And Australian Distributor Praised By Company CEO

If you've stopped by the Pipistrel display at nearly any major aviation event, you are likely to have met Michael Coates. He is Pipistrel's distributor for the U.S. and Australia, and apparently leads a pretty talented sales team.

The evidence of that is in an e-mail Coates recently sent to Pipistrel. "This really important news kind of snuck up on me as a surprise, but I have just noticed today that our multi-year cooperation with Pipistrel has resulted in selling our 100th aircraft today...!" Coates wrote.

"In anybody's business, selling 100 aircraft is truly a remarkable milestone (especially given the financial climate in the last five years), but it is made easier by the fact that my dealer team is representing the best company in the world of light aviation and success must be shared and acknowledged to a great team of dealers in the background providing support and sales to our customers."

"Michael Coates is not just a great distributor and salesman, but also a true partner to Pipistrel through the last 15 years," Pipistrel CEO, Ivo Boscarol said of the sales milestone. "He could always help us with his calm and determined reasoning. He was the one to help me and to show me the light at the end of the tunnel when I felt desperate, for example at last year's NASA challenge when everything went wrong and I have pretty much given up already. I have become reconciled with the fact that we were not going to go to Oshkosh or to the GFC with the Taurus G4 at all because of all the problems, technical and financial trouble - but Michael convinced me to persevere! Not many people know that if he hadn't convinced me to stick to our plan and go to the competition, Pipistrel would never win the NASA Green Flight Challenge 2011!"

Boscarol said that Coates creates countless promotional material - flyers and posters - for his own sales markets, "but generously lets us use it all. He helps to create the sales politics of Pipistrel with the precious experience he has. He and his entire international team of sub-dealers give us priceless market feedback about our aircraft, so we can create improvement. He never finds it difficult to fly to the opposite side of the globe for technical training of distributors or just to help us.

"Just look at the way how he started to promote Pipistrel - especially at the fair in Oshkosh - throughout the last years. These are the years of the world's worst economic crisis and the crisis of American aircraft industry. But his persistent and innovative way had to result in a success sooner or later. Pipistrel is the only aircraft producer that can boast with over two dozen aircraft sold at the Oshkosh fair this year," the CEO said.

"So the news about the one hundred aircraft sold did not come as a surprise to me at all. We owe a large part of Pipistrel's success to Michael Coates and his entire team of local and international dealers from Australia, New Zealand and the United States of America. Thank you, thank you, a BIG thanks to all of you from Ivo and the entire Pipistrel team Slovenia!"

(Lower image Pipistrel Virus)

FMI: www.pipistrel.si