The Steel CodCast

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The council’s third question of the week: SKS launched a 36-inch Induction Pro range with a built-in combi steam oven -- is it a range customers ask for, or one you have to talk them into?
73% of the council said they have to talk customers into it. Only 10% have had a customer ask for it unprompted. Jon’s take: the product is phenomenal, but this episode is a critique of the story, not the range itself.
SKS is in an unusual spot. Not a true startup that gets automatic benefit of the doubt. Not a standalone luxury brand judged on product alone. They’re owned by LG -- which means dealers immediately pattern-match to Samsung and Dacor. Fair or not, they’ve lived that movie before. Service slips, the brand gets run like a division, the channel remembers. And SKS has been hiding from that connection since day one -- no LG anywhere on the badge or the messaging.
Jon’s prescription: own the positives of the LG relationship head on. Stability, resources, staying power -- dealers who’ve been burned by brands that disappeared want to hear that. And then address the perception directly. Service model, rep structure, who answers the phone. SKS is good at talking about the product. But when perception is the obstacle, you have to talk about the company.
The risk for dealers who wait: the quiet death of a demo range. Jon points to the SKS 48-inch dual fuel as a cautionary example -- an incredible SKU with sous vide, steam, and induction that isn’t getting the floor attention it deserves because the demo is effortful and nobody sustains it.
If you’ve never shown this range, show it. Qualify your customers, ask SKS for the support you need, and invest now. Dealers who do are going to own this category when awareness catches up.

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Jon sits down with John O’Halloran, who leads luxury strategy for Nationwide Marketing Group. John came up through the luxury side of the industry -- Oakton in Chicago, Sub-Zero, the builder community, about a decade at Elmo, and then a role launching Samsung and LG in the independent channel before joining Nationwide seven years ago to build out their luxury initiative.
The conversation covers what independent dealers are actually missing without a buying group (aggregated intelligence vs. operating inside four walls), why digital discovery has replaced destination as the primary driver of the replacement buyer, Jon’s take on the philosophical divide between luxury manufacturers and core manufacturers, and why accountability is the one structural advantage that no big box can ever replicate in luxury retail.
Jon’s version of the buying group argument: you can have 30 years of experience and still be operating blind if all you can see is your own data. The Nationwide member is making decisions with visibility into what’s working across hundreds of dealers in every market. The non-member isn’t.
Jon’s take on luxury vs. core brands: luxury built their go-to-market around the assumption that the dealer is essential. Core manufacturers, in many cases, engineered their products and marketing to not need a salesperson. When a brand puts a checkout flow on their own website, they’re making a statement: the consumer doesn’t need help. Choose your vendor relationships accordingly.

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The council submitted its first question to itself: which brand do salespeople sell to the spiff the most? The results came in -- SKS topped the list at 43%, followed by Monogram at 29%, JennAir at 17%, and Dacor and LG around 11%.
Jon walks through why almost no brand actually wants to run a spiff -- and why they all keep doing it anyway. It comes down to fear. No brand wants to be the first to stop, because the brand that blinks loses floor attention within a month, and the VP turns the spiff back on bigger than before. It is a standoff that has been running for years, and the customers fund it without a vote.
The bigger conversation is about where that money goes and what it produces. Jon breaks down why spiff creates artificial share numbers that nobody wants to stress-test, why 1 in 3 council members who said they don’t sell to the spiff are probably telling the truth, and how floors that pool the spiff with service technicians have quietly solved the incentive problem. Plus -- the direct connection to Monday’s MAP violations episode: a spiff is the one tool a brand has to go around your floor decision, and if they’re in your penalty box, they can still reach straight to your salespeople’s paycheck.
Three things to do: audit your numbers by brand, set your floor rules before the rep walks in, and ask for the money somewhere it actually lasts.
 

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The council was asked this week about brands allowing other accounts to undercut MAP pricing -- and in some cases UMP pricing, which is a unilateral minimum resale price, an actual binding policy that should not be touched. 85% of the council has watched it happen, documented it, and reported it. Most got ignored. Jon’s take: the reason it keeps happening is that it has never cost the brand anything.
A report is a request. It asks someone else to do something. A third of the council has filed the same report more than once and seen nothing change. That is not a failure of effort -- it is a failure of leverage. The brand shrugs because the numbers still come in. The brand that knows you will not act has no reason to.
What brands actually respond to is numbers. Everything a rep reports upstairs -- their share, their sell-through, their growth story -- is built on your floor and your staff’s conviction. When enough floors stop leading with a brand, that shows up in a quarter’s results faster than any stack of violation reports. A brand can always ignore a complaint. It cannot ignore a number it has to report.
The penalty box approach is not about pulling the brand. A customer who asks for it by name still gets it. What changes is the undecided customer -- the one who came in for guidance. That customer gets steered to a brand that is behaving. The violating brand stops getting the first demonstration, the best display position, the training investment, the promotional energy. You never announce it, never threaten, never send a letter. Let them feel it in their numbers first.
While they are in the penalty box: go to the rep and their boss in writing and ask specific questions. How many of my reported violations were actually investigated? What was done? Who decided not to act? A brand that takes this seriously answers those questions. One that does not just showed you where the relationship actually stands.
The standard Jon sets for a brand to earn its way back: violations investigated and acted on within a timeline you define, a rep with real authority, one consistent message across all reps in your market (inconsistency between what two dealers in the same city get told is its own violation), and a policy that applies equally to all accounts. Write it down. You cannot hold a brand to a standard you have never defined.
The alternative most dealers are already living: leading with the brand, building the case on your floor, and watching the cheapest seller in your market harvest the sale. You are doing the brand’s selling for their worst partner. Nobody should be comfortable with that.

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Happy Halloween. Jon is solo this Saturday with the first mailbag episode -- pulling questions at random from the hundreds that came in since the format change. He’ll do as many of these as it takes to catch up.
Topics include: the format debate (shorter vs. longer), where the name Steel Cod actually came from, whether appliance dealers should sell plumbing and lighting, how to sell a product that’s not on your floor, trendy finishes (taste vs. tide), the Miele “too small” objection broken down by brand capacity data, whether anyone should still sell Viking, and updates on which brand guests are coming -- and which ones are not.
On Miele: Jon runs through the actual capacity numbers published by LG, Maytag, Whirlpool, Samsung, and GE. They’re all landing at roughly the same three-basket load. Samsung says overloading hurts cleaning. GE says pounds aren’t even a capacity rating anymore. Miele holds the same load and was engineered specifically to clean it. Stop apologizing for the number.
On Viking: if you need a podcast to answer this for you, you probably already know it doesn’t belong. Floor space is currency. Make brands earn it, and know exactly what they’re solving for you before they get it.
On brand guests: Whirlpool is a definitive no. JennAir is a fast no. Electrolux has gone quiet. Blue Star -- Jon is keeping that one quiet for now. Sub-Zero Wolf -- great relationship, no urgency on their end, Jon thinks they’ll get there. SKS -- leadership changes are being sorted out, and Jon is confident they’ll be on.

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Thermador named 16 designers to a new Design Council. The Retail Council was asked what happens when brands build programs like this -- does it send business to the dealer or go around them? The council was divided, and Jon says the division makes sense once you understand that the question has two very different answers depending on what the program is actually designed to do.
The Thermador Design Council is not a lead generation program. It is a product influence program. Sixteen designers, two-year terms, brought into close conversations about where the product is going. That is a legitimate thing for a brand to do -- and it is going to have a real impact on where Thermador’s product direction goes from here. But it is not the same thing as a dealer referral program, and treating them as equivalent is where dealers get into trouble.
What the program creates is deep designer loyalty to the brand. Two years of close conversation means those designers understand Thermador at a level most designers never achieve with any brand. The question is where that loyalty goes. If the program has explicit channel structure -- every touchpoint reinforcing that Thermador is sold through independent dealers -- then the loyalty becomes a dealer asset. The designer who feels deeply connected to the brand walks their client into the dealer showroom with more conviction than ever. If the program creates brand loyalty without channel clarity, the designer will eventually go direct. Not out of malice -- simply because nobody told them where the purchase was supposed to go.
Jon’s single test: ask the brand, when a designer in your program specifies your product, where does the sale go? If the answer is clear, the program is built for you. If the answer is vague, it is not -- and the dealers who lost designer relationships to brands going direct lost them because the program was never designed to protect their position in the first place.
What a dealer can do: build your own designer relationships independent of any brand program. Be the indispensable person in the designer’s professional life before any brand fills that space. The dealer who is the designer’s trusted advisor never loses the specification to a brand program because the designer comes to them first. No brand program replaces that relationship once it is built. When brand loyalty and dealer loyalty compound each other, it becomes additive. When they compete, the dealer without their own foundation loses.

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Asko publicly committed to the independent channel exclusively. The Steel Cod Retail Council was asked if that makes them more likely to give Asko floor space, and what the brand still needs to improve. Jon’s take before any nuance: this is unambiguously good news, and the channel should respond to it seriously -- not cautiously, not with a wait-and-see attitude, and not by leading with everything that needs to change before anyone would even consider it.
The council’s skepticism is earned. They’ve watched luxury brands say the right things and then show up in environments that cheapen the very conversation independent dealers work to have. They’ve watched dealers invest in display and staff development around a brand and then watched that brand open a box account down the road. Jon says that skepticism belongs on whether the commitment is real -- not as a reason to dismiss a commitment that is the right kind.
Brand recognition came back as a concern from the council. Jon pushes back hard. Asko was Sub-Zero and Wolf’s business partner before Cove came out. But even if it is a real concern, the answer is still no. The independent channel’s competitive advantage is not selection, not price, not convenience. It is expertise -- the ability to guide a customer who doesn’t know what they need to a decision they’re confident in. That customer does not need to have heard of a brand before they can fall in love with it. They need to trust the person in the room. Asko requires an educated salesperson to sell it. The independent channel has plenty of those. Low brand recognition is not a barrier -- if anything, it is a reason to be in the independent channel in the first place.
What Asko still needs to prove: service infrastructure that doesn’t require dealers to find their own servicer. Parts availability on laundry specifically -- that is where the concern is most concentrated right now. A salesperson uncertain about parts will protect the customer relationship by recommending something else. It is not a detail, it is the difference between a brand staff recommends with full confidence and one they quietly avoid. Rep support that shows up when there is a problem, not just when there is a promotion.
On the product itself: cleaning specialists. Dishwashers and laundry at a genuinely differentiated luxury level. Jon puts them in the Miele conversation on laundry. Dealers who carry Asko and feel supported by the brand sell them with conviction. The opportunity is real if the infrastructure matches the commitment.
Jon’s advice: ask your rep about service in your specific geography -- not national metrics. Ask about the parts story on laundry. Press them. If the answer holds up, the floor conversation is earned. East Coast dealers with Pinnacle representation should already be looking at Asko seriously.

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Sam Calisch, CEO and co-founder of Copper, joins Jon and Anthony this week. Sam came to appliances from MIT, federal energy policy, and the Inflation Reduction Act -- he is an energy company that happens to make a range, not the other way around. And that framing matters, because the problem Copper set out to solve is not a product problem. It is an installation problem.
The hidden cost killing induction sales is not the range. It is the electrician. A 240V circuit installation in any major market runs $1,500 to $3,000 before you even start shopping. Homes built before the 1990s may need a full panel upgrade on top of that. Jon’s math: a $6,000 appliance conversation becomes a $9,000 construction project no one asked for. That is why induction pitches stall. That is the exact barrier Copper’s Charlie range was built to remove -- it runs on a standard 120V outlet. No 240V circuit, no permit, no scheduling delays.
Charlie 2.0 now also works on 240V, so it handles customers who already have the outlet. The battery inside gives you full induction power, lets you cook through a power outage, and makes the unit portable enough to demo at a street festival or farmer’s market -- which Sam says has been one of the most effective sales tools they have, because the light bulb goes off when people actually cook on it.
Third-party proof stack: Wirecutter, Time, Wall Street Journal, Fast Company most innovative company 2026. And a 10,000 unit deal with the New York City Housing Authority -- where the cost of maintaining gas pipes in those buildings was actually higher than replacing everything with Charlie. That is demand pull, not just a press run.
On manufacturing: Charlie is now built in Miele’s production facility in Opelika, Alabama. First time in over 125 years Miele has manufactured for another company. Jon says if startup reliability has ever made you hesitate, that one sentence should answer the question.
Three-part sales conversation for the floor: the demo (the precision and speed speak for themselves), the pediatric health stat (40 to 42 percent higher asthma risk for kids in homes with gas stoves -- a health statistic, not a green talking point), and the available rebate of up to $840. Jon’s point: every induction customer you are losing right now has the same reason. Charlie eliminates that reason entirely.

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Interest rates are up. Mortgage rates are up. The council was asked if they’re feeling it on the floor -- 70% said yes. Jon’s first response: make sure you know what you’re actually looking at, because if you treat a shift like a decline, you’re going to make every wrong decision for the next 12 to 18 months.
The council numbers break down clearly. New construction and production builder business is down. Remodeling is surging. Luxury is holding. The middle is getting squeezed the hardest. Jon says the mistake is looking at those numbers and going into panic mode, because what’s actually happening is very different from a down market. It’s a customer migration.
The reason it looks like a shift and not a decline: the homeowner who bought or refinanced at 2.5% in 2020 is locked in. Their monthly payment would more than double on a comparable home at today’s rates. They’re not moving. That kills the new construction pipeline -- the full kitchen outfitting that comes with a move. What replaces it is the renovation customer. The couple who has been waiting to make the home their own. The empty nester finally spending on themselves. These are real customers with real budgets, and in most markets they’re not just compensating for new construction -- they’re outpacing it.
The path to this customer is different. The new construction customer came to you because someone else put you in the process. The remodel customer comes because they almost decided, and a designer or contractor they trust sent them your way. That means your pipeline right now runs through relationships. And here’s the thing Jon keeps coming back to: designers are in the same market you’re in. They have more time right now. The dealer who invests in those relationships during this period is building a pipeline that pays off for years.
On the middle squeeze: Jon says don’t engage it. The customer who’s trimming packages and asking for your best price was stretching to get to you before rates went up. Every time you have that negotiation you lose margin, you lose time, you lose positioning, and you teach your staff that price is something that moves when the market gets tight. The luxury customer is still there. Mortgage rates don’t change what someone who’s decided to invest in their home is willing to spend on a kitchen they’ll cook in for the next 20 years. The only question is whether you’re going to let luxury win for you.

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The Steel Cod Retail Council was asked this week what matters most when evaluating whether a product belongs on their floor: innovation, price point, or brand recognition. Nearly 40% of the council didn’t pick any of those three. They wrote their own answers. Jon says that is the most damning finding of the whole episode.
His own ranking: innovation first, price point second, brand recognition dead last and not close. Brand recognition works in big box because the customer sees a name and buys it. In the independent channel, the customer buys because the salesperson convinced them to. A dealer who uses brand recognition as their primary evaluation criterion has outsourced the most important decision they make to a manufacturer’s marketing team. Wolf has made bad products. Miele has made bad products. Gaggenau has made bad products. Brand name is a starting point for customer expectation. It guarantees nothing else.
Innovation comes first, but only honest innovation. Jon’s test is three questions: does it make the result meaningfully better for the specific customer on your floor? Does it eliminate a real frustration? Can your staff demonstrate it in a way that makes the customer feel it, not just understand it? If no to any of those, it does not go on the floor. Air fry is convection. The channel has spent years calling incremental improvements innovation, and the word has lost meaning because of it.
Price point is about where a product fits in the conversation you are already trying to have with your customer. It is not whether the product belongs at all. Does it fill a gap in your current mix? Does it create a natural progression toward greater investment? Those are the right questions.
The off-script criteria the council actually uses: does it fill a void in my mix, does it add a customer I am currently losing, can it be demonstrated compellingly on my floor, is there rep support, is there service infrastructure. Jon’s bottom line: every brand that listened to this episode just slumped in their chairs, because their reps are walking into dealer meetings ready to talk about the three things the council just said do not matter.