A short tale of Vermont Castings and me - by Craig Issod- The legends and history surrounding this company are many, and some have been written already. However, since history looks different from varied perspectives, I am adding my small pieces to the puzzle.
Our Small Town Stove Shop and Vermont Castings
Having started a stove shop in the late 70’s, I was very familiar with the Vermont Castings name. At the time, they sold only direct to the public - NO DEALERS. They had fancy color literature which asked the customer “Why should you buy a stove from a bunch of people you don’t know up in Vermont?”. The earliest literature featured a bunch of scraggly longhaired men and women, while more modern brochures dropped the hippies off the page.
Each year they sold 10’s of thousands of stoves, and became so successful that they built their own foundry in rural Vermont. Soon an enameling plant was added, giving them a capability that no other American manufacturer had.
As the early 80’s rolled around, Vermont Castings saw that many stoves were starting to be sold though dealerships like the one I owned. In response, they opened up a few dealer....VERY few, for instance only one or two in the state of NJ where I lived. We, along with most dealers, continually lobbied them to allow us to sell their products. After all, they had the most popular brand name in the country! I remember meeting with one of their representatives in a top floor suite at the Franklin Wyndam Hotel in Philadephia in the early 80’s. At the time, their sales people were flying around in a company turbojet and staying in lavish suites with all the amentities. We had a good interview, but they turned us down.
Soon afterwards, we found out why. They were allowing one of their existing dealers to open a second store in our little town - just two miles down the street. Worse yet, the store had a similar name! We called the dealer who was planning to do this and told them that all would be OK if they moved 5 or 6 miles away, but that a move right down the street would be WAR. We had a very strong dealership and a good following, so we could be quite agressive in our posturing, pricing and advertising. They laughed and basically told us that “all’s fair in business”.
To make a long story short, we ended up trumping them (we were VERY upset at what we saw as a threat to our livlihood), and they had to close their shop. This was a first for Vermont Castings since it was previously assumed that a franchise to sell VC was a ticket to print money! Their closing rocked the executive offices up at VC, and soon after we received a visit from Duncan Syme, the founder of the firm. He was not visiting to talk business, but rather to gaze upon the victor of one of the hardest fought battles in the retail stove business. A month or two later, we received a visit from Stephen Morris and Sandy Levesque, who were the top dogs in the sales department of Vermont Castings. They invited us to come on board as a dealer, and the rest is history! Our little shop is still existing, although with new owners, and you can still buy a Vermont Castings there.