The Steel CodCast

Walk into any appliance showroom today and you'll find the word "luxury" on products at $800, at $2,000, at $5,000, and at $15,000. Every one of them carrying the same language — premium, professional, elevated, sophisticated. Jon Beresford opens this Saturday deep dive by saying that confusion is costing the independent channel something significant — and that the independent dealer is the only p...

The Steel Cod Retail Council is back with results from four questions that cut right to the core of how independent appliance retail actually works. Anthony Fors and Jon Beresford break down whether true brand loyalty exists in luxury appliances, what manufacturer support really costs dealers when you run the full equation, how the floor is currently grading SKS, Miele, and Fisher & Paykel, an...

Panel-ready vs. stainless sounds like a finish preference conversation. Jon Beresford says that's exactly the problem. When a salesperson treats this as a simple either-or — you like the integrated look or you don't, pick one — they're leaving their customer to discover the full picture on their own, usually mid-project, usually at the worst possible time. This isn't a comparison between two appli...

The question comes up on every laundry floor: the washer has steam — so what? It already has water in it. Jon Beresford says it's one of the fairest questions a customer can ask. And the problem isn't the feature — it's that almost nobody in the industry has ever given it a proper answer. Steam in dryers is an easy sell. The outcomes are tangible and immediate: fewer wrinkles, fresher clothes, qui...

GE. LG. Frigidaire. Whirlpool. Café. Electric ranges keep showing up at the top of the Power Index — and despite everything the industry knows about gas and induction, the trend won't stop. In this episode, Shannon and Jon dig into what the data is actually saying and what the industry keeps getting wrong when positioning ranges against electric. The short answer: familiarity is a more powerful fo...

Most salespeople feature stack. Jon knows it. You probably know it about yourself. And this episode isn't here to shame anyone for it — it's an olive branch. If you're going to keep listing features no matter what, here's a framework to do it in a way that actually lands. Because the features were never the problem. The robotic, brochure-swallowing delivery that sends customers mentally checking o...

Jon Beresford says the biggest threat to independent appliance retail isn't Amazon, big box, online retail, or AI. It's the experienced salesperson sitting on the floor right now who decided at some point that they already know everything they need to know. And the most dangerous part? To that salesperson, it doesn't feel like stagnation. It feels like mastery. Jon walks through what this actually...

Every salesperson has had this customer: they walk in loaded with research, quotes specs, references YouTube videos, and pushes back on almost everything you say. And the instinct is to assume they think they know more than you. Jon Beresford says that instinct is wrong — and it's costing salespeople sales they should be closing. This episode tackles one of the most requested topics from the Steel...

The Steel Cod Retail Council is back for July, and Jon Beresford is breaking down three questions that generated some genuinely surprising results. First up: if you had to build your entire floor around one luxury cooking brand — Monogram, Blue Star, or SKS — what would the council choose? Monogram took it, and Jon explains why that result makes complete sense given what the independent channel ha...

Study the steam oven category deeply enough and a problem emerges: almost every brand leads with the same talking points. Steam cooking. Convection. Automatic programs. Reheating. Healthy cooking. And when salespeople can't find the real differences, they invent ones that aren't big enough. Customers feel it immediately — and retreat to the path of least resistance. Jon noticed this compression wh...

The Power Index measures showroom consideration activity — not sales data, but what customers are actively discussing on the floor right now. And in the luxury outdoor grill category, something is shifting. In this episode, Jon Beresford walks through which brands are gaining ground, which ones are cooling off, and what the psychology underneath it all means for independent retailers. The core the...

French tops are one of the most skipped products on the appliance floor. Salespeople find them intimidating. Customers don't know what they're looking at. And the result is a product that almost never gets the conversation it deserves. In this episode, Shannon and Jon break down what a French top actually is, where it came from, and how to make the sale to a customer who walked in with zero frame...

FreshFlow. HydroFresh. FreshSeal. ProduceSaver. If you've ever tried to explain produce preservation to a customer and ended up just reciting a branded name — this episode is for you. Jon Beresford breaks down the actual hierarchy of refrigerator food preservation: what matters, in what order, and how to tell the difference between a refrigerator that's genuinely engineered to protect produce and...

The Power Index has been tracking a shift — Monogram is showing up in showroom conversations in places it historically hasn't. In this episode, we sit down with Julie Burns, Executive Director of Monogram, to hear what's driving it straight from the source. Julie came into the appliance industry from a luxury background outside of appliances, which gave her a perspective that long-time industry in...

The bigger the kitchen, the better. That's the assumption. Jon Beresford disagrees — and he has a very specific reason why. In this episode, Jon and Shannon break down why massive luxury kitchens are often the most poorly designed spaces in any home, and why almost nobody involved in building them has any financial reason to tell the homeowner to pump the brakes. The case starts with constraint. S...

The Steel Cod Retail Council is back for its second weekly episode. Four questions, answered anonymously by a handpicked group of experienced independent appliance retail voices — owners, managers, floor salespeople who deal with these conversations every day. This week's questions: Q1: Miele, Wolf or Gaggenau — you can only carry one steam oven line. Which do you take? Jon walks through what the...

This is probably the most emotionally charged debate in the appliance industry. More emotional than gas vs. induction. More emotional than front load vs. top load. And in 2026, it's still very much alive. Deep fill vs. load sensing — and what it actually tells us about how human beings process trust, visual evidence, and decades of marketing conditioning. Jon Beresford breaks down where the belief...

NSF certification comes up on appliance floors more than most salespeople realize — and most of them can't fully explain what it means when it does. In this episode, Shannon and Jon break it down from scratch. What NSF certification is actually measuring, why a dishwasher with a "sanitize" button isn't automatically NSF certified, and what the difference between the two actually means for the cust...

We've been collecting questions from retail partners for months and today we're finally answering them. Ten questions, from the floor — real, anonymous, and in some cases pretty uncomfortable. This is the first Steel Cod mailbag episode. Every question comes from someone in the independent appliance channel who took the time to submit something they couldn't always ask out loud. Jon Beresford answ...

Reliability vs. serviceability — most people think they're the same thing. They're not. And the difference might be the most underresearched part of buying an appliance. In this episode, Jon Beresford breaks down a distinction the industry has been blurring for years: reliability is the probability of a problem occurring. Serviceability is what happens when it does. Consumers devote almost all of...

The garbage disposal is one of the most used fixtures in any kitchen — and it hasn't meaningfully changed since 1953. Nobody in the industry pushed for better, and consumers never thought to ask. They just accepted the noise, the smell, the slow drains, and the mystery jams as part of the deal. In this episode, we sit down with Tim Ketchum to talk about Composer — a completely rethought garbage di...

The customer walks in having watched every YouTube video, read every Reddit thread, and practically memorized the spec sheet. Most salespeople either try to out-knowledge them or shut down entirely. Both are mistakes — and in this episode, Jon Beresford explains exactly what's really going on when that customer walks through your door. Spoiler: they're not there to embarrass you. They're anxious....

The Steel Cod Retail Council makes its podcast debut — and we're kicking it off with four questions that cut straight to what independent appliance retailers actually think. Every week, Jon Beresford (VP of Sales, Steel Cod) surveys a handpicked group of the most experienced independent appliance retail voices in the country. Owners, managers, floor salespeople — people who've been in the trenches...

A customer walks in and says they're looking at Thermador. Most salespeople immediately pivot to a challenger brand. That's the mistake — and it's costing the sale every single time. In this episode, Shannon O'Hara and Jon Beresford break down the real reason challenger brands like SKS, Fisher & Paykel, and Blue Star keep getting undersold in the luxury space. It's not a product problem. It's...

SKS and Thermador Pro Gas Ranges have nearly identical feature lists. Steam. Induction. High-output burners. So how do you actually tell them apart — and how do you help a customer choose between them? In this episode, Anthony Fors and Jon Beresford make the case that the luxury appliance industry has been grading these ranges on the wrong scorecard — and it's costing challenger brands like SKS th...