What Would The World Miss if Coptrz Didn’t Exist?

"Drones aren’t about flying robots. They’re about solving problems no one should still be doing by hand."

That’s the kind of answer you get from someone who didn’t just build a company, they built a new way to think. Their focus has always been sharp: use drones to solve painful, expensive, risky problems in the real world. And if the industry wasn’t ready? Build it anyway.

In this story, we dig into how Coptrz came to exist, what nearly broke them and what keeps them chasing problems others write off as “just how it’s always been.”

Not a Shop. A Change Engine.

It started with frustration. Long before Coptrz had a name, Steve Coulson, the Founder & Director of Coptrz was watching bloated corporates and cautious public-sector teams pour money into tech they never really used. Drones were starting to come through, but no one was connecting the dots between the tech and real-world commercial outcomes.

So in 2016, he said, “Screw it. Let’s build this.”

Not just a drone supplier. Not a gadget store. A company that could actually help businesses change how they operate. That meant solving real operational pain. Coptrz was built to be a change engine, not a vendor. And they’ve stayed that way.

Replacing Danger with Data

If Coptrz hadn’t stepped in, a lot of problems would still be stuck in the “just deal with it” pile. Infrastructure inspections would still mean shutting down power stations or sending engineers up scaffolding. Confined spaces would still require humans in hazmat suits. Entire industries would still accept downtime, cost and risk as unavoidable. They replaced ladders and danger with data. What used to take days now takes minutes. What used to risk lives now runs on LiPo batteries. Without Coptrz, the commercial drone space would still be shiny hardware with no practical roadmap. A fantasy, still stuck in a brochure.

When It Almost Didn’t Work

The beginning wasn’t easy. In fact, it nearly broke them.

For the first 18 months, the market simply wasn’t ready. The market just wasn’t ready, and enterprise buyers though curious were paralysed by caution. “I watched bank accounts drain while I pitched to people who just weren’t ready to change,” Steve recalls.

Then came the breakthrough: a major utilities contract. The work proved the model. It paid the bills. It bought time. And most importantly, it gave Coptrz the momentum to never look back.

Of course, the resistance didn’t stop. One of their favorite stories is about a client who told them drones would never replace rope access because “our insurers won’t allow it.” Coptrz didn’t fight the client. They went to the insurer, built a risk case, got buy-in, and flipped 70% of those jobs to drone-first. That one win now saves the client six figures annually. 

Turns out, “we’ve always done it this way” is just code for “no one ever showed us a better way.”

Selling Vision

Steve is always the first to admit a personal flaw that’s become something of a team joke: “I still can’t fly a drone for toffee,” he says. “I sell the vision, not the joystick.” What he brings to the table, unapologetically, is honesty, sometimes brutally so. If a client gets excited about a flashy piece of kit, he’s not afraid to say, “No, you don’t need that £30k sensor you saw on YouTube.” The goal isn’t to impress, it’s to deliver real value. That kind of blunt transparency may not win every sale, but it builds something far more important: trust.

Seamless by Design

Today, Coptrz is known for delivering end-to-end solutions that just work. You sign one deal, and get everything: hardware, software, training, compliance, support. It’s seamless, and it feels obvious. Like it should’ve always been this way. Behind the scenes, getting drone manufacturers, software companies and regulatory bodies to play nice is not a simple task. Months of negotiation, iteration and sheer grind went into creating a subscription model that now powers 70% of Coptrz’s recurring revenue.

The Heart of the Matter

Walk into the Coptrz office on a Friday, and you might catch a team ritual: whoever made the biggest blunder that week buys donuts or drinks, depending on how bad the blunder was. It’s a lighthearted tradition, but it says something real. They’re human. They mess up. But they own it, laugh about it and keep building.

And what they’ve built? It works.

A power generation customer once calculated the savings from just one inspection round using Coptrz drones: £3 million. They called it a typo. It wasn’t. It was the real impact of removing scaffolding, minimizing downtime and trusting a new way to work.

Still, one myth refuses to die: that drones are toys for nerds. If you're still stuck in the “pilot with a GoPro” era, you're missing the point. Coptrz has been on a mission to kill that thinking since day one. Because drones aren’t cool, they’re critical. When used right, they save lives, money, and time.

It’s Not About the Drone

One piece of advice Steve gives to anyone entering this space is: don’t get distracted by the flying robot. It’s about solving real business problems. Success doesn’t come from knowing every airframe inside out. It comes from understanding the client’s pain points. “If you can talk ROI and compliance as well as you can talk flight time and payloads, you’ll win,” he says. That mindset is what separates the hobbyists from the professionals and why Coptrz continues to lead in delivering measurable value.

And if Coptrz disappeared tomorrow?

According to Steve, what the world would lose is simple: “A team that actually gives a damn about making drones work commercially. Coptrz doesn’t just sell drones, we make them work in the real world, in real industries, delivering real value. Without us, the drone world would go back to being all flash and no follow-through.”

And that? That would be a loss far greater than anyone realizes.