Q: How many Javelin jets has ATG sold so far?
A: We have taken about 100 deposits.
Q: If the plane hasn’t been certified yet, won’t be available for a couple of years, costs $2.8 million and requires a $25,000 deposit, how have you been able to get so many planes sold?
A: People who are buying these airplanes are very passionate about aviation, and this is a unique product that really doesn’t have any competition out there.
Having the ability to purchase what will be a certified aircraft with military flying characteristics is a dream that many people in the aviation industry have had. What we do from a marketing standpoint is show them how this can fulfill that dream.
Q: If I were a potential buyer, how would I find out about the plane?
A: A potential buyer would contact us. There may be specific questions such as runway field length, does it come with ejection seats and of course, the big one, how much does it cost.
If the client is still interested, we encourage our distributors to have them come out and visit our headquarters. We have about a two-hour tour that we give them, which includes meeting with some of our top execs, going over and seeing the prototype and the (research and development) facility, and then culminates with a flight in our flight simulator.
Typically the client comes out of the simulator all smiles and then will go home, and in a large number of cases, will follow up with a deposit on the aircraft. We also do take the flight simulator to the National Business Aircraft Association annual show. We got them into the simulator and it was amazing to see because more than one person got out of the simulator either reaching for his checkbook or his cellphone to wire the funds.
Q: What’s the average income of your target customer?
A: They are high net-worth individuals. They’re entrepreneurs. They’re in the 40-year-old to 60-year-old range, very successful in business. The vast majority of them are very accomplished pilots. A lot of them have a military background. Most of them currently own and are flying a high-performance aircraft.
Q: Where did you work before joining ATG?
A: I was national sales manager for a company called Sun Valley Bronze. My background is in the sale and marketing of high-end products to high-end individuals.
We manufactured very high-end building products – solid bronze sinks and faucets and door hardware, that sort of thing. I did a house in Aspen where we put $120,000 worth of door hardware into a single home. It was a lot of fun, but as I got to talking more and more with George Bye (ATG’s chief executive) about the products here, this looked like even more fun.
Q: How did you meet George?
A: We had actually met at church, and then we started playing tennis together and sort of swapping ideas on marketing. He was starting up the company.
Q: So you build race cars as a hobby?
A: About four years ago, in passing, I mentioned to my wife that I had always wanted a muscle car. Unbeknownst to me, she went out and started looking. About six months later one Saturday morning, she said,
“C’mon, let’s go for a ride.” She had come across a 1964 Pontiac GTO that was in very rough shape, and she bought it for me.
When I first started work here at ATG, at the first National Business Aviation Association conference I attended, a gentleman by the name of Connie Kalitta came to our booth. Connie Kalitta owns a top fuel drag racing team.
The following year I decided that I’d go out to the Mile High Nationals and probe around. So I went back out and was really reintroduced to drag racing, out there marketing the Javelin to a lot of different owners and drivers.
We decided that we would turn this into a bracket car, which is a style of drag racing, and spent the last year or so rebuilding this car, with the help of some friends and my sons, and just this spring started racing it out at Bandimere speedway.
Edited for space and clarity from an interview by staff writer Kelly Yamanouchi.
