Dan Bonar: You’re absolutely right: It's been really challenging the past few years. We had this incredible time during COVID, where business was exceptional—insane amounts of sales. Everything we could build was going out the door. But that was taxing. It was taxing on people. It was taxing on the company.

You know, we grew to over 300 people, and management styles have to change when you get about that point. ICC is still a small enough company that we can deal directly with most problems. We don't have a lot of middle management, so we go into the office, and you manage a few people, and they do their jobs.

But when you’re over 300, you need that. You can no longer handle all the fires. You can no longer do all those things. And we never evolved to grow that middle management team. So that was really hard. Things are slower now, but we're a much more efficient 220-person company than we ever were as a 300-person company. We saw this peak of sales and just kept flowing, right? It's really interesting if you look at our sales numbers from 2023, 2024, 2025—it used to be a flat line. Everything we could build was sold. And we had to build as much as humanly possible. And then in 2024, we saw this slight wave of seasonality to it. In 2025, our sales curve returned to almost normal for the hearth industry—a seasonal sales curve—which is different, and sales are lower. But we're more efficient, and the employees are happier. We had employees who were doing overtime every week for two years. What's interesting now is you couldn't pay them to take overtime. Nobody wants it. They want their weekends off. They want their weekends at home. So as a leader, one of the things I’ve recognized more than ever is that they need that time off.

More recently with tariffs, I would say that it was just frustrating. At ICC, everyone is a professional. They come in, they want to do their job, they want their work done, they want to do it well. And you go into the office every day, and you do your job, and then the next day, all the work you did yesterday is gone. Because a rule changed, a law changed, and we're always working towards solutions for tariffs and how we work with them. But nothing was constant.

And so we would work for two weeks on a solution for something and then—bang—those would change. Yeah. And it'd be scrap. It felt like someone had tied our feet together in a marathon. And I had employees on the verge of just saying, “Screw this. I'm out of here.” So I had to call a meeting with our team and just say, “This is reality right now. We're going to go in, and everything may be different from yesterday, so our mindset has to be, we’re doing this now.” And I think it was one of the biggest things that helped them work through it. But we've been pretty stable now for a while, so at least we can go in and get some work done.

DB: I genuinely just tried to downplay it. Just keep calm and carry on. A huge portion of it is just going in and being the voice of reason. Keeping calm. Also celebrating wins. When we have a little success, we've got to celebrate that. But just trying to keep calm in the face of all of this was probably a virtue.

DB: We've had tons of opportunities to do other things. The way we go to market is through exclusive distributors. We only have one group of customers. Even in Quebec, where our factory is, there's a retailer who's literally a stone's throw from the factory. He buys through the local distributor, who's two hours away. He doesn't buy directly from us. That's just how we do it.

When we decide whether we're going to take on a project, we always consider what's in the best interest of our distributors. There might be an amazing gas fireplace product line for sale, and it would be fun to pick that up. But what happens if we do that? Our distributors are already saturated. They already have a bunch of gas fireplaces. Now, I'm trying to sell them a new line that they may or may not feel obligated to take, and it displaces their other sales. I'm forcing product down their throat that they don't necessarily need or want. So we look for openings. We look for paths. We look for products they genuinely need—and if you've got good partners, they'll give you that information.

We focus internally on development and R&D, but we think externally outside of that. We try not to look at what other brands are doing with their products; that leads to discontentment with what you've got. There's nothing wrong with being inspired by a product, but you can't be everything to everybody. We look internally for R&D, and we look externally for trends, new products, and what our distributors actually need.

DB: I think one of the biggest things is that we're a privately owned, medium-sized business. We don't have shareholders demanding growth. We don't have some external force pushing us to grow. We've been basically at maximum capacity for production for 20-plus years. Every year we get new equipment; every year we grow our capacity. But we want to really be the specialists at what we do. We could grow by buying other companies that do other things, and we have done that in the past. ICC started as just chimney. Then we bought RSF Fireplaces. Then we produced Renaissance as our own line. And we bought a second chimney plant about six years ago that does very large industrial chimneys outside of our industry. So we're growing, but not in a way that the industry sees as a threat to any of our distributors' current market share.

DB: Many people see chimney as a commodity—the kind of thing you can get from the hardware store. But if you really want to give it value, you have to restrict where it's going. We go exclusively to specialty retail because those dealers understand the benefits of the product. They appreciate the installation advantages. They genuinely understand what they're selling. If you're at the hardware store and you've got a piece of chimney that's 30% more sitting next to one that's 30% less, and the teenager working the shelves can't explain the difference—what are you going to buy? You need a hearth professional there who can explain the advantages.

And here's the thing: The average homeowner who's buying a chimney isn't even shopping for a chimney. They walk into the store looking for a really nice new stove. The salesperson tells them about it, and more often than not, that dealer loves our product because it's easy to install and easy to work with. But if the customer has concerns about the chimney or the cost, you've got a professional who knows the brands, knows the differences, and can explain to the customer what they're paying for and what they're getting.

DB: Right—and let's say we did that and decided to go direct somewhere. We could start selling to Lowe's and Tractor Supply or whatever. Assuming we kept all of our existing sales, great—it grows. But what reason would the dealers have to keep us? What reason would they have to promote us and be loyal to us? A lot of it comes back to loyalty to the product: They like the product. But I'd go so far as to say that many of our dealers have been extremely loyal to the brand because we also protect them. By not going to the hardware stores, we’ve given the dealer the opportunity to sell a premium product, at a premium price, at a premium margin, versus the stuff at the hardware store.

They can make that money and pass it along. We go exclusively through one distributor in every market. One. That keeps things fair. If you have 10 distributors in the same market, each of them is looking for market share. So where does the product go? Everywhere.

DB: Most of our distributor relationships are more than 20 years old. Especially in the United States, we've had our distributors for 20-plus years each, and that has worked very well. But as soon as you've got four or five distributors offering the same thing in the same market, all with a different deal, all with a different setup—they can't sell to you, so they sell across the street. Then they sell to the hardware store. Then they sell to the next guy. That’s when the market gets saturated, and now it's a race to the bottom.

But with distributor-controlled, high-end products, dealers make more margin, they sell for more money, their customers are happier, and their installations go faster. It just works.

And that’s the ICC way.

DB: Tom Pugh used to say, “We're not the largest chimney brand. We're never going to be the largest chimney brand. We're the immovable number two.” And it's okay being the immovable number two. As soon as you decide you want to be top dog, you lose so much.

DB: I've worked at a retailer. I've been an installer. I've worked in stores. But I've never owned a retail store, so anybody listening—take this with a grain of salt. Don't come to the booth and yell at me.

But I feel like many retailers have become the brands that they sell. “We carry this product line; that's what we advertise.” Your branding becomes the brand's branding. What many retailers should do is focus on selling themselves first and the brands second. Sell your experience, your service, your installation crew, how many years you've been in business—all of that first. Then, underneath that, sell the brands.

In terms of carrying too many brands, I think it just happens organically. Nobody intends it. You're doing a great job, right? So the distributor or manufacturer comes by and says, “Hey, what about this too? We'd love you to carry this. We'd love you to do that.” And you wind up being really good at all of it—until you're not anymore, and you're not doing justice to anybody. I don't have any good tips for how they whittle it down, but they need to focus on the business first and brands second. Distributors like to talk to dealers about “tying up the brand”—just to keep it away from their competition. Is that a good thing? Is that a bad thing? Maybe if I were a dealer, I'd do it too. I don't know. But they need to focus on what differentiates them first—not the brands so much.

DB: You're exactly right: It goes back to before my time. ICC started with these distributors when I was a kid. I knew many of them. So I can't speak to the beginning as much. What I can say is that it was all handshakes. To this day, we don't have a single written contract with any of our distributors. We have zero contracts. If any one of our distributors wanted to drop us tomorrow, they could do that. And it goes both ways, of course. There is not a single contract with any of our distributors in North America. These were partnership deals with people who believed in the product, wanted the product, and understood the product. Because understanding the product—how it goes to market, how to sell it, all of that—it's not straightforward. Not everybody can grab it. So the right person is the one who understands the product and is interested in the crusade of starting it. Obviously, a huge amount of work was done by my dad and by Tom Pugh to establish those distributors. And it was all handshakes.

DB: Yeah. The nice thing is the company has kind of evolved to the point where we're either the biggest or second-biggest line for most of our distributors. So that makes the relationship easier for the most part. And we always try to just be good communicators. People like to know what's happening. They want to know the little things. Dealers find every little thing. If you change something on a piece of chimney, they will call you the next day and say, “Why is this like this? Is this on purpose? Is this permanent?” Because their hands are on it every day. So we try to be good about communicating even the smallest changes as much as possible. We rely heavily on the distributors to pass that information along. But just maintaining those relationships comes down to respect and understanding that they're doing their best to grow the market as well. And in some markets, we have a huge amount of the market share, right? So how do you continue to grow in those markets? It's always a challenge, and that's something we'll constantly work on.

DB: Appreciate it.