The Steel CodCast

Anthony Fors and Jon Beresford
  • 5.0 (7)
  • Business

The Steel Codcast is a daily podcast delivering expert commentary, industry insight, and real world perspective for professionals across the appliance industry. Hosted by Jon, VP of Sales, and Anthony, President of Steel Cod, the show blends evergreen education with breaking appliance industry news to help listeners sell smarter, position products more effectively, and stay current in a fast moving market.------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Designed for appliance sales professionals, manufacturers, distributors, brand leaders, and independent dealers, The Steel Codcast covers appliance industry trends, sales strategy, and product positioning across every category. Episodes explore everything from small countertop appliances and mass market products to high end luxury appliance brands, built in appliances, and emerging technologies.Released Monday through Friday, the podcast delivers consistent commentary on appliance sal...

  1. 9h ago

    What Made You Successful? The Council's Answer Has Nothing to Do With Product

    📩 Apply to Join the Retail Council Here: https://tally.so/r/vGGdq0 The Retail Council was asked what made them successful in appliance sales. The top four answers: deep product knowledge, relationship building, listening, and honesty. Jon's first reaction — none of these are things the industry actively trains on. And every one of them boils down to trust. He breaks down all four. Product knowledge means knowing the why behind the product, not just the feature name — and the shortcut to learning it is going category first, then brand, then SKU. Listening means stopping talking and letting silence do the work — the most important thing a customer says almost always comes right after a pause. Honesty means delivering bad news the moment you have it, not the day before the install. And relationship building means understanding that the sale itself is the smallest part of any relationship in this channel. None of these four things cost a dime. They should be the foundation of training on every floor from day one. New episodes drop every day of the week. Rate and subscribe wherever you listen.

  2. 3d ago

    How Many Luxury Brands Should Be on Your Floor? The Retail Council Can't Agree.

    📩 Apply to Join the Retail Council Here: https://tally.so/r/vGGdq0 The Retail Council was asked how many luxury brands they carry. The answers ranged from 3 to 17 — and Jon says that range is a channel identity crisis, not a market diversity story. The dealers answering these questions are the best independent appliance retailers in North America. The fact that their answers are that far apart means the channel hasn't decided what luxury means. Brands are filling that vacuum in their own favor, and dealers are accepting a manufacturer's definition by default — which means losing every time a customer compares a brand that was positioned as luxury against something that actually is. Jon's advice: write down what luxury means on your floor. Not a list of brands. A definition. The criteria. What a brand has to be and what experience it has to create to earn a place in your luxury conversation. Then evaluate every brand you carry against it honestly. The number on your floor follows from having a clear answer. Without one, it's just accumulation. New episodes drop every day of the week. Rate and subscribe wherever you listen.

  3. 4d ago

    The Retail Council's Biggest Concerns — Technicians, AI, Margin & Private Equity

    📩 Apply to Join the Retail Council Here: https://tally.so/r/vGGdq0 The Retail Council was asked what their single biggest concern is as an independent appliance retailer right now. The technician shortage came back as number one — not close. Jon breaks down all four concerns: the technician shortage and why the dealer always ends up absorbing the damage for a problem manufacturers created; the race to the bottom, which he's clear is not a market condition but a distribution decision; AI and which salespeople are actually at risk (hint: it's the spec-sheet ones); and private equity consolidation and what dealers are really giving up when they take the deal. The bigger point running through all of it: what are you building right now that capital can't replicate? New episodes drop every day of the week. Rate and subscribe wherever you listen.

  4. 5d ago

    Tyler Buckley on Why Fisher & Paykel Already Belongs at the Luxury Table | The Steel CodCast

    Fisher & Paykel has been called a brand with "potential" for years. Tyler Buckley, VP of Sales at Fisher & Paykel Appliances, is here to change that conversation — and so is Jon Beresford. Jon's opening take is direct: Fisher & Paykel is already at the luxury table. The product has been there since they made the deliberate jump into that market, and it keeps getting better. The gap isn't in the product — it's in the story the floor is telling. Or more accurately, the stories the floor isn't telling at all. Active Smart is the most underappreciated preservation system in luxury refrigeration. Most people on the floor know the technology exists. Very few can explain why it matters. Here's the version that works: every time you open a refrigerator door, warm air rushes in, humidity shifts, and temperature stratifies from top to bottom. A conventional thermostat sits idle until the average temperature drifts far enough to trigger the compressor. By then, the food has already been sitting in a compromised environment. Active Smart reads every variable simultaneously and adjusts airflow and cooling in real time — before the cabinet even has a chance to destabilize. That's not a spec. That's a story. And it's one the floor needs to start telling. The DishDrawer story is even simpler. Jon's entry question: "How does your household actually run dishes throughout the day?" Almost every answer is the same — run a half-full machine every night, or hand wash throughout the day because you don't want to wait. The DishDrawer eliminates both problems. Run each drawer independently. Fill the bottom, run it. Let the top fill throughout the day and run it when it's ready. This isn't a dishwasher upgrade. It's a workflow upgrade. The customer who buys one will always come back asking why nobody told them sooner. On DCS outdoor: Jon owns one and has for years. The pitch isn't BTUs — the pitch is professional-grade outdoor cooking built since 1989, before Lynx, before Hestan, before the category even existed. That's the same heritage story that closes Sub-Zero indoors every single day. And then there's the origin story. A woman in New Zealand needed a fridge. There was no way to get one. So she built her own. That instinct — find what's missing and build something better — is woven into every product decision Fisher & Paykel has made since. Lead with that story. You're not selling a product. You're selling a way of thinking. And once a luxury customer buys into that philosophy, the close takes care of itself. 📩 Apply to Join the Retail Council Here: https://tally.so/r/vGGdq0 📧 Questions for the mailbag? Send them to: https://tally.so/r/D4ROKb

  5. 6d ago

    Name a Steel Cod Position You Disagree With. Here's What the Council Said.

    📩 Apply to Join the Retail Council Here: https://tally.so/r/vGGdq0 The Retail Council was asked to name a Steel Cod position they genuinely disagree with. All the critical feedback came back to Jon. Two things got the most heat: JennAir coverage and the Convection Hierarchy. Jon responds to both. On JennAir: the contradictory feedback actually reveals the real story. The dealers who think Steel Cod has been too harsh and the dealers who think crediting the V2 wall oven was absurd aren't disagreeing with each other. They're living completely different JennAir experiences based on who their rep is and how good the service infrastructure is in their market. Jon's also clear on where the blame actually sits: Whirlpool, not JennAir the brand. The good reps out there are doing heavy lifting for something they didn't break. On the Convection Hierarchy: Jon concedes the framing. It should have been anchored in multi-rack baking from the start, because that's where every tier on that hierarchy earns its place. But the engineering differences are real, and he's not walking the hierarchy back. New episodes drop every day of the week. Rate and subscribe wherever you listen.

  6. Oct 5

    Rep Quality Over Margin: What Independent Dealers Actually Value Most From Manufacturers

    📩 Apply to Join the Retail Council Here: https://tally.so/r/vGGdq0 The Retail Council was asked: if a manufacturer came to you tomorrow and said they'd do whatever it takes to get on your floor, what's the first thing you'd ask for? They came back with rep quality, service, margin — in that order. Jon says this ordering made him prouder of the council than anything they've ever sent back. Ten years ago the answer would have been margin, margin, and more margin. The fact that it's now third tells you exactly what this channel has been through. He breaks down why the rep relationship is the foundation everything else is built on, why service infrastructure is the real test of whether a manufacturer keeps the dealer's promise to their customer, and why a manufacturer waving a big check in front of your face at the start is now a red flag, not an incentive. Message to manufacturers: show me the person, show me the infrastructure. Then we can talk about money. New episodes drop every day of the week. Rate and subscribe wherever you listen.

  7. Oct 2

    The Last Mailbag: A Major Format Change and What's Coming for The Steel CodCast

    📩 Apply to Join the Retail Council Here: https://tally.so/r/vGGdq0 This is the last Mailbag Episode??? Jon and Shannon answer four final questions and then announce a format change that reshapes the whole schedule starting next week. The short version: the Steel Cod Retail Council is moving to four days a week — Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday — with one question per episode instead of four. The same analysis, more depth, more time to go where each answer actually demands. Wednesdays stay as guest episodes, with Steel Cod University content woven in. Shannon moves up to co-hosting four days a week. Mailbag Monday is shelved for now. The longer version is in the episode, but the reason is simple: the council data changed the show. Retailers and manufacturers are all over the Friday episodes. When you ask people something anonymously, they say things they'd never attach their name to. That feedback is worth building around. On to the questions. The first one is about ice makers — specifically how to sell them without it feeling like a pitch. Jon's answer is to never lead with the product. Ask "how do you handle ice when you're entertaining?" and let the customer describe the problem themselves. Once they've told you the freezer is always full or the fridge maker can't keep up through a dinner party, you're not introducing a product anymore. You're solving something they just told you they have. From there, drop it wherever a second zone comes up in the conversation — bar areas, islands, outdoor kitchens, basement setups. At the luxury tier, True and Sub-Zero are the names you need to be most comfortable with. The conviction carries. The second question is about Dacor. Jon doesn't tell anyone to pull the brand — that's a floor-by-floor call. But he's honest: floor trust is not keeping pace with whatever product improvements might be happening. If you're feeling it and seeing it, that's the data. The more interesting part of his answer is where he'd point that display space if it opened up — FULGOR Milano. Italian brand that's been building appliances since the 1960s. Crescendo burner with five discrete cooking levels engineered into the hardware. Tri-laminate griddle. Designer Tristan Gary visited the factory and came back saying the product is second to none — unprompted, unpaid. Jon sees a trajectory there that goes well beyond what's visible today. The third question is why some manufacturers prioritize Big Box over the independent channel. Jon gives both sides honestly. Big Box offers a purchase order with a number on it — volume certainty, shelf placement across hundreds of locations, demand that already exists. The independent channel requires the manufacturer to invest in creating that demand first. Some brands have run the math and concluded they can't win here. Their product and rep infrastructure aren't good enough to earn genuine floor conviction, and Big Box only needs a shelf and a price tag. What those brands aren't accounting for is what they lose — access to the customer that was supposedly built for them. The fourth question is about onboarding training for new hires. Steel Cod is building it. It will be premium. It is not ready yet. But it is coming. New episodes every day of the week.

  8. Oct 1

    The Delivery Problem Nobody in the Appliance Industry Is Talking About

    📩 Apply to Join the Retail Council Here: https://tally.so/r/vGGdq0 📧 Questions for the mailbag? Send them to: https://tally.so/r/D4ROKb Jon goes solo this Thursday to answer one of the most consistent questions coming out of the Retail Council: why can't a manufacturer ever tell me when my product is going to arrive at my dock? The short answer is that most of them genuinely don't know. The longer answer is that they don't know because they chose not to invest in the infrastructure that would tell them. And the reason they haven't felt enough pressure to fix it is that the pain from their failure never lands on them. It lands on the dealer and the consumer. Jon walks through exactly what happens to your product the moment it leaves a manufacturer's dock. It enters an LTL freight network built to optimize the carrier's efficiency, not your landing date. Your appliance gets unloaded, sorted, and reloaded at terminal after terminal. The manufacturer's customer service rep has a tracking number that updates when the freight scans at a terminal, not in real time between terminals. When they call the carrier and get a status update, that update is hours old. "Sometime next week" is not evasion. That is genuinely the full extent of what they know. Then there's the dock appointment problem. Carriers won't book a dock appointment until they have a confident ETA. Dealers say they have appointments available. Vendors say they can't get one. Both sides are telling the truth. The problem is that nobody built the system that produces a confident ETA in the first place. That system exists. Platforms like Project44 and FourKite aggregate carrier GPS data, terminal scans, and network feeds in real time and give manufacturers a continuously updated arrival window. The brands you don't complain about are using it. "Your appliance is at the Richmond terminal and will arrive Thursday between 8am and 2pm" — that answer comes from a manufacturer who invested in visibility. Consumer electronics figured this out years ago. Building materials figured it out. The appliance industry hasn't adopted it at scale, and it's not because the technology wasn't available. The accountability gap is the real problem. A manufacturer's internal metric turns green the moment a product ships from their dock. The missed delivery window, the consumer who took a day off work, the frustrated call back to the dealer — none of that shows up in any of their dashboards. The party that caused the problem bears none of the consequence. Jon closes with what dealers can actually do right now: ask manufacturers directly whether they have real-time freight visibility, get carrier PRO numbers and track it yourself, document which brands consistently fail on timing, and bring that data into every brand conversation. Logistics reliability is a competitive advantage. The brands that have built it are already pulling ahead. New episodes every day of the week.

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Ratings & Reviews

5
out of 5
7 Ratings

About

The Steel Codcast is a daily podcast delivering expert commentary, industry insight, and real world perspective for professionals across the appliance industry. Hosted by Jon, VP of Sales, and Anthony, President of Steel Cod, the show blends evergreen education with breaking appliance industry news to help listeners sell smarter, position products more effectively, and stay current in a fast moving market.------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Designed for appliance sales professionals, manufacturers, distributors, brand leaders, and independent dealers, The Steel Codcast covers appliance industry trends, sales strategy, and product positioning across every category. Episodes explore everything from small countertop appliances and mass market products to high end luxury appliance brands, built in appliances, and emerging technologies.Released Monday through Friday, the podcast delivers consistent commentary on appliance sal...

Information

  • Creator
    Anthony Fors and Jon Beresford
  • Years Active
    2025 - 2026
  • Episodes
    100
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Show Website
    The Steel CodCast

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