VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. – Nick Jiannas will become vice president of sales and marketing at STIHL, Inc., headquartered in Virginia Beach, effective July 1. He succeeds Peter Burton who has held the position since 1997 and is retiring after 30 years with the STIHL organization.
Jiannas most recently served as branch manager at Northeast STIHL and will be responsible for sales for the domestic and export markets, sales planning, new product development, all marketing programs, and branch operations throughout the U.S.
Jiannas began his STIHL career in 1995 as an operations assistant at Pacific STIHL, during which time he spent three months of 1996 in Germany working in the research, development and product management departments at ANDREAS STIHL AG & Co. KG. A year later, he relocated to eastern Tennessee to become a territory manager for Mid-Atlantic STIHL, where he actively represented STIHL among independent servicing dealers and provided product and sales expertise, as well as customer relations. He was promoted and moved to Virginia Beach to assume a product manager position at the STIHL headquarters for U.S. operations, where he developed overall marketing programs for power tools and coordinated the development of sales objectives and strategies, while working with the marketing communications team on advertising and promotional programs.
In 2002, he took over as manager of export and sales planning, responsible for preparing and monitoring monthly sales forecasts and evaluating annual purchase projections for domestic and export markets. And, in July 2006, was promoted to branch manager at Northeast STIHL. Under his leadership, Northeast STIHL experienced an overall sales growth of 35 percent in six years. He is most notably recognized for maintaining profitability throughout the recession by managing business elements down and controlling expenses and, ultimately, leading two record sales years coming out of the recession.
Jiannas has a bachelor’s degree from the College of William and Mary, where he majored in economics and German. He earned his master’s in business administration from the University of Florida.
