Cultivating a Mindset of Innovation and Excellence
- FEATURED INTERVIEW
Cultivating a Mindset of Innovation and Excellence
Featuring Karen Harman-Smeltz, Dane Harman, and Peter Parsons
With Tim Reed
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Tim Reed: Joining me from Halifax, Pennsylvania, and Corner Brook, Newfoundland—I’m here today with Dane Harman, Karen Harman-Smeltz, and Peter Parsons. First off, I don’t know if we have ever had four guests on the show via Zoom before, so this is a feat of technological amazement—we have literally spanned a quarter of the globe to put this together. Thank you so much for being here today.
Karen Harman-Smeltz: Thanks, Tim. That’s awesome. And you’re right: We’re kind of spanning east, west, and north, aren’t we?
TR: We really are. Now Dane and Karen, you two had an amazing conversation a number of weeks back at HPBExpo, where, Karen, you interviewed Dane about the origin story of Harman Stoves—a legendary company in our industry. Today, I’d like to have a follow-up to that conversation from a little bit different angle, and I’m going to let Peter take over in just a second. I know Peter has been a huge champion of the products you two have worked on—he has literally built a market out of almost nothing in Newfoundland for pellet products because of the work you’ve done. So we’re going to shift and let him take over the show and ask some questions about innovation, excellence, and mindset, and we’ll see where it goes. With that: Peter, why don’t you give us a little background on your experience with Harman, with Dane, with Karen—and then let it rip.
Peter Parsons: So I actually met Dane in 2018. I was a fanboy then, and I’m still a fanboy now. It’s kind of an odd thing. You know how kids meet their idols? If I was a car nut, and I got to meet Henry Ford, or if I was a computer nerd, and Steve Jobs was the person—well, Dane is the one for me. I don’t know if you think of yourself that way, Dane, but that name—Dane Harman—is up there with Steve Jobs and Henry Ford and all that stuff in our industry. And I know there are probably other people out there who feel the same way. So I’m extremely honored that I can sit down with you guys today and actually do this. It’s a pleasure—and I’ve been agonizing over this for weeks.
Dane Harman: I don’t qualify in the same circle as those guys, but thank you.
PP: All right. So we heard the origin story—we knew about all that stuff from the last podcast. I’m curious about the Pellet Pro system. Back in 1991, you came out with that. Why does that design still work today? I explain it to customers all the time—how it works, and how we sell it as dealers. But why does it work so well?
DH: Well, the burn pot itself has its roots in anthracite coal. Anthracite coal has lots of ash, and to get it off the end of the burn pot, you have to push it. So I had a pusher block that actually pushed the fuel up and out over the ledge, if you want to call it that. Anthracite burns best if you’re feeding the coal up from the bottom—it gets hotter and hotter as it rises, and you’re adding air to it, and it gets hotter and hotter until it comes out the top, when it’s really on fire. And that works for pellets as well. So instead of feeding it with a pusher block from the bottom, I fed it with an auger.
Part of the reason for that is that somewhere in there you have to have a break—a fire break, if you want to call it that. So we had the auger feeding in and pushing, because an auger can push as well—pushing the pellets up the hill, if you want to call it a hill. Now you need some way to separate the hopper from the auger. Since I was using a pusher block in the coal stoves, I thought, Well, I’ll make a pusher block push the pellets from the hopper across and down off a ledge, and then into the auger. So I needed a mechanism to do that, and that’s when I came up with the pusher plate and the cam arm and so forth that makes the plate go back and forth. That is part of the original Pellet Pro patent: Pellets drop in, the pusher block backs up and pushes so many across and down, and they fall into the auger.
Some years go by, and thinking about how we could improve it, the thing I wanted to improve was that the pusher block had to have its stroke adjusted—an adjustment for how many pellets would actually fall in. At that time, everything was adjusted with a threaded rod on the end of the pusher block. It pushed with a cam and returned with a spring, and the adjustment on the end set how far it could return, which adjusted the stroke. We were also running everything with timers—temperature governed when it would feed and for how long—but we really wanted to get to where the amount of feed was driven by temperature. That’s when we switched over to a slide plate instead of the pusher block. Instead of pushing the pellets over the edge, it slides them to one side and then basically pulls the rug out from under them—and then slides them some more. What that allowed me to do was simplify. Instead of having this one-inch-thick by four-inch-wide machined block, now it’s a laser-cut part. It simplified it and made it better. That’s how we got to the Pellet Pro system.
PP: The issue for us in Newfoundland—if you guys haven’t looked, we’re 90 miles out in the Atlantic Ocean—was that pellet was almost a dirty word here. We started in 2001 as The Tin Man, and we started as a sheet metal and fabrication shop. It’s unique to be able to watch a flat piece of metal come into the shop and then go out as something else, right? I got my roots in welding, so I was a sheet metal worker and welder too. So your story really hits home for me because we’re used to the same kind of thing—and the idea of building stuff is phenomenal.
Did the ESP probe come in at the same time as the Pellet Pro system? Is this all in one?
DH: The Pellet Pro II was where we started to have a thermocouple for the probe instead of a thermistor, because it can stand higher temperatures. As it turns out, we didn’t need those high temperatures later on, and we went back to a thermistor. Here’s how this all developed: Everything was going fine, and we said, “Let’s do an insert.” So now this became the question: “How am I going to adjust that feed adjuster if it’s in the fireplace?” That’s when we came up with what is basically the current knob board, as we say. To increase the temperature, you increase the time that the feed motor is turned on, basically—but it didn’t require you to get behind the stove. That all started with the Invincible insert and the Invincible RS—because there was an Invincible T, which used the old system. The Invincible RS used the new thermocouple and a new control that doesn’t have any mechanical input. That got us going on what is really the basis for what’s still out there today in the P Series.
PP: Back when pellet stoves were new here, people would buy them from our Canadian Tire—which is similar to Tractor Supply in the U.S. They sold England’s Stove Works and different brands—stoves that feed pellets from the top and drop them into a burn pot. And geeking out about stoves: I know the Harmans have a negative-pressure firebox versus the positive-pressure firebox in the other brands. Explaining that to customers—we don’t get into that. Like Tim says about the bowling balls, we don’t hand too many bowling balls to customers. But we had such a fight in the beginning. The fight was that no one wanted to hear about pellet stoves. No one. And then I’d say, “Well, we have Harman,” and I’d start explaining how a Harman works—how it pushes the pellets up into the burn pot—those kinds of things make a difference. The fact that we can do temperature and not a feed rate.
When we set it to room-temperature mode, that was a huge thing for customers. As the day changed in someone’s home—when the sun came out and the place started to warm up—the stove didn’t need to be feeding. For people who had it on four pounds per hour on a different brand of stove, they were wasting pellets—and you could see a huge difference in consumption. So we started getting those out there, and when we did, everything started changing. We went through an initial period of maybe five or six years, but then we changed the whole dynamic in our area—because we were working all over the island. We changed it to the point where “pellet stove” became a good word, and everybody started coming looking for them.
And now we’ve gone back, kind of in the same boat again. People are going to the Canadian Tires of the world going, “Well, I heard about those good pellet stoves they’ve got—I’m going to get one of those too, but they’re way cheaper here.” So now we’re on a different trend, and it’s interesting to see how it changed over the last little while. I looked at some specs the other day: We’ve put over 300 stoves in the market since 2011. For us, that was $1.5 million of revenue. It’s crazy to think how much the stoves could do and what they do for customers, because we’re heating their homes with them. It’s amazing.
DH: That whole system, at that time, really was on the edge of what was possible—and that’s where we always tried to stay. And we had some really smart people working for us. I won’t name names, because then I’ll miss somebody, but the same guy designing control boards and control logic goes all the way back to the first ones. He basically lived with pellet stoves—several in his basement, in addition to the ones being tested at the factory. He knew everything about them. When a new one would come out, he’d say, “Okay, we can do this now, because this new processor knows how to do this and that one didn’t, and we need less memory or more memory or whatever.” We’ve been very fortunate to have that technology always expanding and getting better.
TR: Dane, let me ask this question, because you just said something really important about the people you worked with being so smart. You obviously had this amazing idea for this company—for this new way of thinking about stove design. It starts with you, but you just said there are other people involved who took it even further. How did you ride the line between being the initial innovator but not the only innovator—sharing your ego with other people, putting it aside so their ideas could push it further? How did you balance that?
DH: Well, they’re more important than I am. They’re smarter than I am. That’s one of the keys: You hire people who are smarter than you are, so you don’t need to wear out your own brain. The whole process, over the years, ended up like this: I’d draw a picture on a sketchpad (I have stacks of books with drawings and sketches in them). Then I’d say, “Okay, I’m working on this one; here’s the concept for it.” And then they would take that and run with it, and I’d watch over it. That method allowed us to do two and a half new models a year—and after a while, it got into the forties of how many stoves we were building.
PP: So when that happens, though—how do patents affect your ideas? If you’ve got an idea like that, do you have to go research first to make sure no one else has it? How does it all come about?
DH: Yeah—you do a patent search when you go for a patent. Although if you have something like a doorknob or a door latch, that’s a little tough—they’re out there everywhere, so you wouldn’t bother with that. The good ones were the Pellet Pro feeder and burn pot; those really amounted to something. I mean, I did a wood-coal combination stove, and that had a patent with 52 claims on it—but we’re not making it. Sometimes you can patent something that’s not worth patenting. But I’m getting in the weeds now.
TR: It’s funny you say that, Dane, because I’ve had some patent conversations recently and learned a little more about it. It’s pretty crazy how it works. There are people, even in technology today at some of the biggest companies in the world, who are not patenting their stuff, because it takes so long that by the time they get through the process, it’s changed enough that they’re moving on to the next thing. But when you have a patent, you get a 20-year protection, don’t you?
DH: Typically 17. But things are moving around and changing, and then you can do improvements to it, so they can end up lasting longer.
TR: So your original patents are still in place because of improvements that have been made?
DH: Yes is the basic answer (without going into detail).
TR: That’s just a crazy process. I’m curious for you, Karen. We had you on the podcast a couple of years ago, and we talked a little bit about your journey through this. You bring a lot of things to the table that are different from Dane. How did you complement him and work alongside him to leverage both of your strengths?
KHS: When I came into the company working full-time, I was taking over doing manuals and working with agencies and photo shoots and that kind of thing. So they were complementary roles—taking everything from engineering and asking, “How do we push that out into an actual product rollout?” It was honestly a natural gravitational pull for me. I can’t say there was one little aha moment; it just felt very natural. And I was given the ability to grow at my own pace and take on more. As with family businesses—and Peter, you can attest to this too—you just naturally see what needs done, and you go do it. Before you know it, your hand is in pretty much every department of the company, which is awesome. Nothing’s cooler than being able to walk through your plant and say, “Hi, Joe!” It’s so great to get to know everyone on the team and their kids. It was a fairly large company, but I was really connected to our people because my hands were in all different parts of it.
And I think no one cares more than family. That’s a beautiful thing—from parents and kids, but also the cousins and uncles and others we had working in the plant back in the Harman days. We feel that very strongly with DS now too. There’s definitely that feeling of nostalgia and love where we are today, because it brings back a lot of those really great feelings and memories, and now we can help this new company grow. So I’ve been loving it.
I’ve also loved moving along in product development—being able to really take part in that. Take the touch control on the pellet stoves, for example: being integral in working out what each icon looks like, how it’s going to work, how it’s going to be coded. It was all hands on deck, and it’s super fun that we all got to be part of that together. And everything we sourced was sourced from York, Pennsylvania. It was based in Pennsylvania, and we’re also very proud of that. The touch control, everything—it was our engineers and a local company creating all of that. We didn’t have to go to a foreign country. We took a drive of about an hour and a half when we wanted to go see our circuit-board company.
The future me needs the today me to do this work right now.
PP: What’s it like, though, when you have all these different things built into the stove, but no one’s pulled the trigger on it? You know the industry needs it—they’re asking for it—but someone else is saying, “Hey, we’re not doing this yet.” Take us through that process.
KHS: Well, that’s the difference between an entrepreneurial business and a corporate business, just by nature. And it’s not because of our industry; it would happen in any industry. You think of the phases of a project, and you consider how to ensure that this product has life into the next decade. Just like we talked about with those patents, Tim: You might develop something now, but technology is moving so quickly that by the time you patent it, you’re on to the next thing. That can be true of stove technology as well. So yes, we did plan ahead with the touch control and Wi-Fi modules, and we were very confident in that at the time. As time went on, that became not a priority—larger companies have a lot of priorities, and it was not chosen. So for us, coming back to a more entrepreneurial business is super fun, because now we don’t have those constraints anymore, and we’re excited to keep doing new fun things.
PP: Does that mean you have to kind of start over? Those patents and things—the ideas in the Harman stove—does that belong to HHT now? And all those ideas in all those books, Dane: is that something we might ever see again in the future?
DH: Well, I’m still designing stoves, and I still know everything I know—so I can’t help some of the stuff that ends up in the designs. Surely something I thought of 10 years ago is still available in my brain.
TR: Let me ask you a question, Dane. You built this amazing company entrepreneurially, you sold it to a larger corporate company and worked for them for a while, and now you’re back in the entrepreneurial world—so you’ve seen a lot of different ways of doing business, and you’ve seen the rise of companies to huge scale. Now, I just learned about this recently, but throughout this whole thing, you’ve been a powerlifter—to the point where—okay, Karen, you’ll have to tell me—did Dane have the world record for men over 40 or 45 at bench press, or something like that?
KHS: A drug-free bodybuilding bench-press record—yes, that is true.
TR: Dane, what was the weight? What’s the max?
DH: That record was 415, in competition.
TR: Wow. And at what age?
DH: I did 400 at 40, and then we went into competition—so I think it might have been 41.
TR: So I think there’s a correlation here. The discipline it takes to be that excellent at something that has absolutely nothing to do with your day job—at least on the surface. How did your work in powerlifting and bodybuilding correlate to help fuel your innovative mind and your discipline in the company?
DH: If you want to do something, you have to decide that you’re going to do it. Once you decide—really decide—then a lot of stuff falls out of the way, and you can go straight to that goal. It’s just like I was saying earlier. I’d go to my guys and say, “This is what I’ve decided we’re going to make next.” Then the whole team would work together, because I’d made that decision. I don’t know if you’ve ever experienced that: When you decide you’re going to do something, other people want to help. It’s an unwritten law, but it’s real.
TR: Talk about that a little bit more. I think that’s really true. What is it about deciding on a direction that rallies people?
DH: It’s the same thing it took to put a man on the moon—and that’s the will to do it. If you don’t have the direction—and, of course, the will that goes with it—it doesn’t go as fast. You can get things done, but if you have respect for a leader who makes a decision and says, “We’re going to do this,” then it just goes better.
KHS: With that, though, comes the responsibility of that leader. A lot of people can say, “Go do this; go do that.” But it also becomes the responsibility of the leader to follow through, to care about the people who work for the company, and to have that be a really transparent and open trust and bond—which I think he’s always been really good at doing.
TR: That reminds me of the Book of Proverbs when it says, “Without vision, the people perish.” And it’s amazing that in that scripture, it’s actually the people who are linked to the vision. It’s not that without vision you will wreck your life or not go anywhere—no, actually, it’s the people you serve who are going to perish if you, as the leader, don’t have vision for what’s going to happen. That’s so good.
Karen, in your career—you come up through the Harman channel with Dane, and when Harman sells to HHT, you have this long career at HHT. I mean, over a decade—what, 15 years?
KHS: Yep, 17 years.
TR: A long time. And I want to ask you this. You’re in the corporate world—a high-level executive with people underneath you—and I know you have a huge servant’s heart for your people. Since we’re talking about this idea of vision, can you talk a little bit about how you approached leadership and leading the people on your team?
KHS: Yeah, sure. I felt a lot of things just came naturally. I never tried to be something that I wasn’t, and I hope that always came through with those I worked with. Nothing about any of us is special; we’re all trying to help each other out. You never know what the people who work for you are going through. I love people; I get my energy from people. So I just kept doing that. I didn’t feel like I was following a certain mantra or a certain book, though I love self-help and I totally eat all of that up. I just tried to be like them. I don’t like to seem like I’m above anyone. I don’t like to tell someone to do work that I myself don’t understand how to do. Some say that’s a good idea, some say that’s a bad idea—for me, I just like to know a little bit about what I’m asking somebody to do, or at least be able to do it myself.
So that’s, in general, how I believe in leading: being down to earth and seeing the simple things people need. Sometimes leaders fail to listen. That happens a lot, especially in a fast-paced business—everybody’s running a hundred miles an hour in a thousand different directions, and that’s when things get lost. That’s when people get lost. That’s when people get disconnected. That’s when they don’t feel valued.
PP: In this industry in particular, I’ve found that I’m built to serve. It’s serving the people I work with, it’s serving the customers who are there—and even with all those pressures, I’m fine with it. Every decision I make going forward is always about my work family as much as my own family. That’s why I often ask myself: If I were selling this company tomorrow, how would that affect the lives of the people working here? Would they still have their jobs? I feel all those pressures. I’m sure you guys must have gone through the same thing.
KHS: I agree, Peter. And there’s something special about those of us next of kin—like yourself, so many dealers, even in the manufacturing world—where the parents started it, and we’ve grown up in it. We’re not little kids anymore; we’re not 18-year-olds just dabbling in the business. We’re grown up, with our own families, and now we’re in an industry that’s been habitually traditional—it’s just a very traditional business—and yet there are aspects that need to be updated and modernized. I imagine for you, and for a lot of dealers, it’s hard to take over the business when the parents might still want some of their original ways in it.
DH: That reminds me of one of the things I picked up on early with HHT: Some decisions I would have made as a private company would have been different, but they’re both right. If I’m a private company, the decision is right; and if you’re a public company, the decision is opposite, but it’s right for them. They’re looking to keep the stock price up. So if we’re making a model that’s not really that profitable, or we’re not selling that many, and we could make so many more of the high-profit models—they’ll stop making that one. Where I would say: “Well, no, wait—we are making money on it, and we do have dealers who want it. We’re going to keep making it.” There’s the difference.
PP: When dealers find issues and come to you, what’s that like for manufacturers? How do they take the feedback when there are issues?
DH: Well, then it goes right to R&D—and most of the time, all the way to me. We come up with a solution and try to get it out to everybody.
KHS: It’s definitely a robust process—from the time something comes in, gets channeled through, gets fixed, gets quality-tested, then goes through the communication process: calling those who would be affected, making sure it gets out to every single dealer and, if need be, the consumer. It’s a well-documented process that goes through a lot of channels and a lot of people, and everybody’s made very aware of it.
Once you decide—really decide— then a lot of stuff falls out of the way.
This article is brought to you by Associated Energy Systems.
TR: I think about similar stuff in my software company all the time. If there’s a bug or an edge case where someone has an issue, the balancing act is always that we need to make it right, but is it worth pulling more resources into fixing it right now? Or does it go in line behind other things? I’m sure it’s similar as a manufacturer. How did you make the decision of “we really need to stop and address this now” versus “it’s kind of an edge case—maybe there’s some user error involved”? How do you decide where to put resources?
DH: If it has to do with safety, it’s immediate. In other words, you go to the houses yourself if it’s related to safety.
KHS: And it’s also the frequency. It’s definitely severity versus frequency, right? Severity—boom, right off the bat, you’re taking care of that immediately. Then it goes to frequency: Is this an isolated problem? Is it isolated only to high altitudes? It could be a whole pile of different reasons, and there are a lot of ways to evaluate where that service needs to happen.
PP: What I used to do, too, is ask customers for their data. And it’s weird, because you’d call in to tech support, and tech support wouldn’t ask for that. I thought it was so strange. I remember having a call one time, and I said, “Hey, can you send me your data?” And they said, “Well, how do you do that?” You put the USB stick in, and they’d send me basically an Excel spreadsheet, and I could go down through the sheet and see, minute by minute, what was happening with the stove. On startup, you could see in the data that it was taking nine, ten, twelve minutes to actually light—versus all the previous times, when it was four minutes and the stove would light. And I’d say, “Did you guys change brands of pellets or anything like that?” And they’d say, “Well, yeah, we did—we ran out of pellets and went to the other store… and yeah, they had them outside.” I said, “Maybe you should try a different brand and see if that works again.” It’s kind of cool that they’re so advanced you can do that.
TR: Whenever I talk to people about Harman stoves now, there are so many things like that. The touchscreen controls, the ease of use, the self-diagnostics, whisper-quiet mode. You go down the list, and these are things that, now that you see them, are so obvious—of course this is how it needed to be—yet nobody else has done it. And I want to get behind the curtain a little bit and ask each of you this, because I think you’ve both brought so much innovation and excellence into our industry in your own ways. Maybe we can start with you, Karen: in the language of Stephen Covey, how do you sharpen the saw? How do you keep yourself in a position where you can bring excellence or innovation to something? Is it books? Podcasts? How do you keep yourself sharp?
KHS: That’s kind of you to say. Yeah, it’s books. I love Dave Ramsey. I don’t know if you know about EntreLeadership and all of that. I highly recommend everyone listen to him. I’m a big self-help person. And I’ll tell you one that’s really great in business. I just heard it the other day, and for some reason it really stuck with me. It talks about talent, who you surround yourself with, and hiring people within a company. It says: You don’t judge a fish by how well it can climb a tree. You hire someone to do a specific job, not everything. I’m not built to develop pellet-stove technology. I can help with the graphic side of all of that, but the rest is for my dad to do. That would be me being a fish trying to climb a tree. That’s not what I’m built for; that’s not where my specialty is. That’s what we have to fill our teams with—making sure everyone has their own special niche, something unique that you couldn’t bring to the table yourself.
TR: That’s awesome. Dane, how about you? What do you do to stay sharp?
DH: Always looking for what’s next—what’s the next edge you can have. Take castings, for instance. Everybody likes a nice cast iron stove. Well, the process was that first you’d make the part out of wood, and then you’d use that to make a sand mold in the sand, by hand. A casting shrinks 1% when you make it, so you have to make it 2% bigger to allow for that. And, of course, now there’s computer software to actually help make those patterns. If you know computer programming and are familiar with computers, when something new comes out, you know it. When you’ve done everything I’ve done for so long and something new comes out, it stands right out: “Hey—there. I’ll go with that. Let’s try that.” So I guess it’s being totally aware all the time, and following what’s happening, and who’s making it. That’s basically how I do it.
PP: Speaking of technology like that, do you think we’ve reached the pinnacle? You look at the processes, the lasers, the castings, the 3D printers. The time is now when it comes to creating things. But have stoves come as far as they can?
DH: Well, I think it’s just easier operation. Communicating with your stove, making sure your temperature is what you want it to be. And you’re thinking, “Yeah, well, you already have that. I asked for something new.” Well—fire isn’t new. We’re still trying to learn how to use it right. I don’t have anything that’s going to make fire obsolete, that’s for sure. You have electric and so forth, but the problem with fire is that it’s fun. I mean, after everything that’s going on, I still want to sit and watch a fire. A real fire, a bonfire, whatever. I don’t think you’re getting rid of that one.
KHS: Saying that makes me think about everything the hearth manufacturers who have been around since the ’70s have been through. They’ve been through how many energy crises, EPA regulation, gas regulation, 2008, COVID. And you think this little thing called the internet is going to hurt? We’re going to figure all of that out. Right now, it feels like the stumbling block is online versus not online—that’s the real hard part right now in the industry. But when you think about all the other hard stuff that has come across throughout the years and been conquered—fire and stoves are, and will always be, an essential, primal need. We’re lucky that we’re in the comfort business. So I guess this is the next question: How do we make the comfort business even more comfortable?
And I think you’re right, Dad—it comes down to there always being an easier way. We talk about the iPhone. Whoever said we needed the iPhone? Someone invented it, and then we suddenly needed it. We’re such a traditional industry—yes, new things are always going to come at us, and we shouldn’t always feel like we have to reject them, because there are definitely ways we can make it all work for us and increase our business.
TR: Karen, I want to ask you something a little bit unrelated. When you were on before, you made a comment I’ve never forgotten—I’ve referenced it in articles and podcasts since. You basically said, “The future me needs the today me to do this work right now.” I’d love for you to elaborate on that concept.
KHS: I think some of it might go back to what my dad said about how you just have to decide, right? If you have a goal in mind, you can’t afford to procrastinate—and I have to say, I’m a recovering procrastinator. So living by that mantra—I need to do this work today so that I can start building toward that reward and that goal—is something I intrinsically had to always say to myself. Some of it, too, is that I really like to be prepared. Probably one of my biggest fears is to not be prepared for something. So that’s another reason for the mantra: You have to spend the day—or a couple of hours at night, whatever it is—preparing for what’s happening the next day, because if not, you’re going to fall flat. I don’t ever want to have regrets. I want to be able to lay my head on the pillow at night and say, “Hey, I gave it my all today.” And if I fell short, that’s okay—because I did the best I could with the time I had that day.
TR: That’s great.
PP: Is there a problem in the hearth industry that keeps you up at night—something you feel generally hasn’t been solved yet?
KHS: The big elephant in the room, for all of us, is how we handle the future of selling stoves online while making dealers whole at the same time—knowing that it’s happening whether we want it to or not, again through big box. I don’t know how it is for you, but I know of a lot of cases in the States where someone will go buy a stove at a big-box store and then call a dealer and expect that local dealer to do the install. And that’s not usually met with open arms by the dealers. That’s everyone’s pain point. Everyone—including manufacturers—is afraid of it, because we care about our dealers, and our dealers are how we grew. Yet this thing called the internet is out there, and it’s not going away. I don’t know that anyone has mastered how to figure that out yet in a way that’s best for the dealer and the customer and the manufacturer.
TR: Peter, to your point, I think about this a lot. There’s a really good book I read a few years ago about growing a company, and the idea is more versus enough. Every company has to make that decision: How much is enough, and when do I need more? There’s a time and place for both. But to use the language of Jim Collins, one of the reasons many companies fall is what he calls the undisciplined pursuit of more. It’s a guaranteed way for your company to start to crumble.
Let’s go back to that example: “We used specialty dealers to grow, but then we opened it up to big box.” From my perspective, let’s think about why we would do that. If we have a strategy that says this market is underserved, our dealers physically can’t take care of everybody, we’re doing lead generation and driving business in, and it’s simply more than we can keep up with—we can talk to our dealers and say, “Hey, we’re going to open up this other channel, but we’re going to make sure you keep growing too. And as we go down that path, if you’re not growing, we’re going to reevaluate our decision to open up another channel.” I think that stuff can happen in relationship and conversation. The biggest problem is that oftentimes manufacturers make that decision without any discussion with their dealers. They also don’t reevaluate a year or two later. Are we being faithful to the original commitment we made? All of that can work itself out, but it takes hard and slow work—doing it together, and being transparent about what our end goal is.
KHS: That’s awesome. That concept in general is really cool—and honestly, it resonates with DS, where we are right now. We’re not trying to boil the ocean. We’re not trying to be it for everybody. We’re just enjoying making new products and selling to the dealers we have—yes, growing in some dealerships, but we can’t get too big too quickly. That really resonates with me. I’m going to share it with the team. I like that.
TR: That’s great. Okay—I know we’ve kept you guys for a while, so we’ll start to wrap. Last year, I came out to DS Stoves for your annual conference, and it was really formative for me. First off, just the background of DS Stoves having Amish roots is so different from any other major manufacturer I know of, and there’s an intrinsic set of values that comes with that: honesty, a commitment to do what’s best for your neighbor, hard work. And it wasn’t that this was preached—“hey, these are our values”—it was just the air you breathe when you’re in that environment. For me, it was really special coming in and seeing that. You’ve both talked about coming back to a small company after an experience with a big one. Not that a big one is bad, but what has that done to breathe life into both of you? And why should local retailers and other manufacturers think about adopting principles like this to breathe life into their people?
KHS: Wow. Yeah—it is a feel-good, positive atmosphere. This is the mantra for absolutely everyone there: “How can I help?” We get things done; nothing goes backwards; everything always goes forward. And that is such a beautiful, beautiful thing to be part of—knowing that your effort going in every day is going toward a goal. Nothing’s going to be taken away, reduced, canceled. You’re always going in a forward motion. And also the ability to take risks and say, “Yep, this is what we decided. We’re going for it. Let’s go.” And we do—and it happens, and it’s awesome. I’ve really been enjoying that we’ve been able to bring so many products to market so quickly, and it’s incredible to see what they can get done because of perseverance and dedication to each other.
You’re never going to walk through our plant without everyone happily talking to you, asking how your weekend was. It’s a culture. You can’t fake it, you can’t make it—it just is, or it isn’t. And it’s awesome to be able to come into something I didn’t know could still exist. Our vision is to enhance the lives of the people who work for us, the people who own our products, and the people who are our suppliers and vendors. And I think we adhere to that. As a vision, it’s something we continue to go back to and say: “Okay, we’re about to make this big decision. How will this enhance lives? How will this affect everyone around us?” And if it’s a negative thing, we don’t do it.
TR: That’s great. Dane, how about for you?
DH: Well, here’s the nice thing: We decide what we’re going to do. When I started working there, we talked about building a wood stove, and we considered how many years it would probably take and how much it would probably cost. In that meeting, we decided to build one.
TR: You don’t have to have a meeting to decide whether or not you should have another meeting.* [All laugh.]
DH: Yeah—we’re not talking about that anymore. What else? What’s next? What else are we going to do? It really comes down to this: We’re the sum total of our decisions. And that’s different from the corporate world, where you have to have meetings and discuss it, and then it maybe gets lost a little bit, and then it comes back, and you may have the same meeting again. And nobody’s doing things wrong—it’s just the corporate way, compared to being able to run with it. That’s the fun part.
TR: That makes a ton of sense. Okay, I have one more question, and then, Peter, you can take us out. You’ve seen the rise of the company you built, growing and growing—then you sell it, and you see what it can be at scale, with real corporate dollars behind it. And now you’ve transitioned out, and you’re back to a smaller entrepreneurial business, putting everything you have into it. What have you learned about business? What’s your biggest takeaway from that ride?
KHS: Well, I have appreciation for both, but here’s my biggest thing: I would not have probably half of the experiences and knowledge without having had the corporate experience. I learned a lot—through bad experiences and through good experiences. And then, over time, I realized: This isn’t me. This isn’t what I want. There was nothing bad that happened—there was no bad reason that I left HHT. I just had an all-knowing moment come over me that it was time to move on. And they know that. I love when I get to see my HHT friends, for sure. But I needed to start something new, and I needed an entrepreneurial business. I knew that fit me—my personal desires and goals, how I like to be with people. It just fits better for me. And like you said, Dad—it’s decisions. It’s being able to know that you’re constantly propelling in a forward motion, and that your day-to-day efforts are going toward a goal that you can see—one that moves.
TR: That’s great. How about you, Dane?
DH: Well, I think one thing that stands out is: I can’t think of any company that got better after they were purchased by a bigger company. It’s a balance, okay? If you have a company and you want to sell it, or you’re thinking about selling it—they’d better give you enough money to make it worth it all. Because it won’t be the same.
TR: Yeah—that makes a ton of sense. Man, both of those answers are really good. Okay, Peter—I’ll let you take us home.
PP: This has been awesome. Just a couple of things I’ve got. What role does wood and pellet heat play in a world that’s increasingly focused on energy efficiency and getting off fossil fuels? What do you guys think that’s going to look like?
KHS: Wow, that’s a big question, especially with everything we’re dealing with on the wood-stove side, and as those decisions happen with the new test methods coming down the pike, at least here in the United States. I think wood and pellet are never going away—energy options are never going away. I think every homeowner should have at least two different types of energy in their home, because of fluctuations. Obviously, we’ve seen a huge increase in gas stove and gas product prices—really, honestly, since Trump took office—even as gas prices go down. So we know that, right? You’re always going to need your pellet and wood to balance out your gas and electric. I don’t see anything going away.
DH: Going back to what we were saying earlier, I think we’re going to keep fire. You’ll have electric and so forth, but we’re still going to be heating with a flame.
KHS: I think our challenge, Peter, is always going to be in what regulations happen in government affairs—and making sure that we always stay linked in with HPBA, HPBAC, and government affairs, and do our best to get to the Hill and make all of those contacts. They’re doing a really, really great job right now working with the EPA and everything with the new methods.
PP: I’m surprised we haven’t seen some different stuff yet in the industry. And maybe that’s where going back to your roots, like you’re doing with DS, makes a difference. We haven’t really seen a hybrid stove or something really different that combines two kinds of fuels, you know?
TR: Like a pellet stove that’s also an air conditioner.
PP: Yeah—sure, there you go.
DH: Well, I don’t know if I’m answering your question exactly, but it would be nice if they didn’t go quite so far with the regulations. In other words, when the limit was four grams an hour, you didn’t see smoke coming out of the chimney—and maybe there was some, or whatever. But think about this: There’s ambient particulate matter. If you burn a stove that burns at one gram an hour, what comes out is cleaner than what was in the room. Everybody has spent so much money trying to get down to those low numbers—and they’ve done it—but it’s hard to do, I guess is what it comes down to. Or else everybody would do it.
TR: A hundred percent. I might get in trouble for saying this, but every time I teach about wood stoves, I try to talk to people about this: With current technology, if you’re selling a hybrid stove, it’s not like a hybrid car, where you get the best of electric and the best of gas. It doesn’t work that way. A hybrid stove—it’s not that it’s a bad thing, but the hybrid stove wasn’t created to solve a customer’s problem. It was created to pass an EPA test, and there’s complexity when you shove a cat up into a baffle system that’s already totally airtight. I think that when innovation can make things better environmentally and solve a customer’s problem, that’s the sweet spot—and unfortunately, as regulations get tighter and tighter, it becomes harder to satisfy both at the same time.
Now—and I don’t think I’m talking out of both sides of my mouth—I think that if we had never had the EPA come in, our stoves would be way worse than they are today. There is no possible way we would have gone from, what, 60 to 80 grams an hour down to one. It never would have happened. So there’s this balancing act. I’m not defending the EPA—I’m not saying everything they do is great or right or efficient. No way. But what I will say is that pressure forces innovation.
KHS: Yeah. And innovation is great, but honestly, it can take the fun out of it—and you’re seeing that. Peter, it’s what you were talking about: It doesn’t seem like everyone’s innovating as much. It used to be that everyone had a concept car at HPBA. Go back about 10 years: Maybe it wasn’t something they were going to sell a million of, but at least their R&D department was really going after something new and exciting to show at the show and prove what they could do. And now, with all the regulation—I’m somewhere in the middle on that. Yes, regulation may have helped us, but there’s no need to keep making it go lower, lower, lower, lower. It just makes the products more expensive. It hinders the time it takes to actually make the product, and it costs a fortune to make, which then makes it cost more for all the consumers. So I think we’ve got to watch out for over-regulation.
TR: I love that, Karen, and I agree that there are diminishing returns—no question. You can’t squeeze blood out of a turnip. I always say that the difference between a stove at 2.5 and 1.5 is like saying, “Hey, this car gets 65 miles to the gallon. It’s not good enough—it needs to get 75.” And you’re like, “Are you kidding me?” We’ve come so far, and it really does become diminishing returns.
Hey—this conversation has been amazing, and I’m thankful to all of you for being on it. I’m going to end with this because it was literally texted to me earlier today by an unnamed sales rep. He knew I’d be talking to you guys, and he texted me: “I’m not joking—I was in a dealership earlier today. We were talking about pellet stoves, and this guy mentioned some difficulties he was having with one brand and getting technical support. And this sales rep—who does not sell Harman—said, ‘Have you thought about picking up Harman?’ And this is what the dealer said back to him, and I quote: ‘I can’t sell Harman because there’s a dealer too close to me—but I’d donate a kidney and my firstborn to get it.’” End quote.
So here’s where we’re going to end, guys. You’ve both built something so special through the Harman brand, and you’re doing the same thing again through DS Stoves. It’s really cool to see that this is what the effort you put in gets you: people who are loyal, people who care. And I feel bad for this poor man’s family, right—that he’d donate a kidney and sell off his firstborn to take it on. But just know that’s what you’ve built. And it’s really, really special. It’s cool to know the journey’s not over—that you’re continuing it with DS Stoves.
KHS: Thank you. It’s been an honor to talk to you guys.
PP: It’s been a pleasure—an absolute pleasure. I’ll never forget this story: I’m standing there when a shadow kind of comes over my shoulder, and I look over, and it’s you. You’ve got a safari-style shirt on—two pockets, pencils in the pocket, the whole nine yards. And I’m looking at you going, “My goodness, it’s Dane Harman.” And I start talking about the stove—the touchscreen, and the ash pan is big, and the 92 pounds of pellets, and all that stuff. And then you pull out your phone, and I thought, Man, how rude is that, taking out his phone while I’m in the middle of talking to him. And then you lean over and you go, “Have a look at this, son.” And you showed me a prototype of a stove you were talking about at the time. My mind was just so blown by the experience of meeting you there. And the next day, we won the Harman Dealer of the Year Award—our first time ever winning it—and you presented it, and you got up on stage and said, “This guy tried to sell me on one of my own stoves.” [All laugh.]
It was such a great experience. And the little things—Karen, you sent me a letter once, a thank-you letter from you guys, and it just meant the world. As a dealer, we’d never go away from that brand. You guys have moved on to DS, and as a dealer, I’m ready to move with you. That’s how we feel about it. It’s those kinds of small gestures that make such a big difference and an impact in our lives. It means the world to me, and I thank you guys for that.
DH: Thank you.
KHS: Thank you. That’s amazing. Well, look at you, though, Peter: You made an entire Facebook page that only benefits the Harman brand. You took that initiative. You’ve done amazing things—you’re posting amazing videos—and we can’t thank you enough. You don’t understand what a big part of the puzzle you are. So thank you.
TR: Guys, this has been so good. I really appreciate all of your time—it’s been incredible. And hopefully we can do this in person sometime. Maybe, Peter, we can get you to Nashville next year.
PP: Sounds good. We’ll work on it.
DH: Cool. Let’s do it.
TR: See you guys. Thank you.
