Europe’s financial woes continue but I’m pleased to say that the Tailwind continues its history of being in high demand in Europe and beyond. When I first launched the Tailwind in 2009, I was surprised by how many people from all over the world contacted me about buying it. I did not expect to have to learn export rules and global shipping processes so soon, but I had to because so many people wanted to purchase it. One of the first to contact me was a woman in France, and she didn’t speak much English and I didn’t know much French. Eventually her son, who lived in New York City, purchased it for her and took it home to France.
Our first distributor was Anatomical Concepts in Scotland (www.anatomicalconcepts.com). The owners are rehabilitation professionals who are very forward-thinking in their approach to stroke recovery, and they had read about the clinical studies involving the Tailwind long before I even founded the company. Today they sell the Tailwind all over the UK.
Since then, we have shipped the Tailwind to Mexico, South Africa, Guatemala, Germany, Greece, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Spain. In Asia we’ve shipped to Malaysia, Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, and South Korea just in the past two months. And the country we’ve shipped to the most? Japan, which has the highest stroke rate per capita in the world. Everywhere you find a developed country, you will find stroke survivors. This is usually because highly developed countries also have highly developed diets—lots of high-fat processed foods high in sodium, in large quantities. And where you find stroke survivors, you’ll find the Tailwind!