Do you know what luxury consumers want?
On today’s episode, Monogram‘s Senior Brand Manager, Robert Koller discusses the luxury consumer. He touches on the overall economic make-up of one shopping in the category: from income ranges to home values. He emphasizes how the average luxury shopper isn’t buying “onsies and twosies” when it comes to appliances, but rather, luxury consumers are looking for total packages.
Listen or watch to determine how you should be thinking about this consumer and how best to network and market effectively.
Need More Marketing Ideas?
Check out why you need a social media crisis plan in place.
FULL TRANSCRIPTION
Mark Kinsley
Welcome to the fam Marketing Show strategies, tips and ideas to help retailers and brands grow their furniture, appliances and mattress business. And yo, Adrienne is in the house. What’s up, Adrian?
Adrienne Woods
Good to see you haven’t seen you sent Good to see it to primetime, I guess it would be
Mark Kinsley
primetime. Hey, and we’re gonna be taking a trip back to primetime today because we have appliances, luxury appliances, consumer profile tips to help you better understand that consumer. And look, it’s not a quiz. It’s not a survey. It’s not trivia. But you do have trivia for
Adrienne Woods
us. I do have trivia, and it’s the best part of the show. Okay, so it’s a marketing show. So I have some marketing trivia, who said, people don’t buy what you do? They buy why you do it. So I’ll give you three options. Is it Simon Sinek. Steve Jobs, Seth Goodwin, or give you a fourth one? Try Kennedy.
Mark Kinsley
Are you talking Seth Godin?
Adrienne Woods
No, sorry, yes.
Mark Kinsley
I have my guess.
Adrienne Woods
You have your best. I’ve
Mark Kinsley
read a couple of books by these authors. So I think I know who it is. And I’m not going to tell you my guess. But if you want to text us on our podium number, you can do so. It is 843 Marcos to mA RC O S 2843 Marcos to text us or just head over to our website fam dot news in the bottom right hand corner you can Texas on our podium number we love to hear your guesses. And if you have a trivia question for us you want to hear on the show, let us know. But we’re gonna save it for the end. Yeah. And what we’re not going to say for the end is the headline from primetime. When it came to exploring the luxury appliances category, we had the pleasure of coming across a gentleman by the name of Robert Kohler, and He is the senior brand manager with monogram. And as we have now entered into the appliances category and the acronym f a m furniture appliances mattress is complete. We were really excited to dig a little bit deeper and understand the consumer profiles, how these products are sold, how the RSA and the retailers can benefit from this knowledge and apply it for the consumers. And Robert kind of took us to school. But before we get to that before we give, get to Roberts consumer insights and really get to know this luxury appliances consumer better. Adrian, you’re in the middle of building your house. And I know you’ve only been like septic stuff. So
Adrienne Woods
it’s it’s the non glamorous side of building
Mark Kinsley
a luxury septic system though.
Adrienne Woods
We bought raw land, okay. It’s not like when you buy a lot that somebody has developed and you’re just like, I’ll just build my house on this. No, we decided to be rustic and buy our own land and carve our own way. And so now we’re building a great house, but it needs a septic system if you want to be able to use the bathroom. So that’s where we’re at.
Mark Kinsley
Yeah, that’s, I mean, you didn’t promise that to your kids? Did you like indoor plumbing?
Adrienne Woods
I didn’t. But there are certain luxuries that I have come to find that are necessary for me. And you know, running water, the ability to flush the toilet, all of those are kind of they’re required. And because I want some nice appliances in my house, I should probably have all of that. So
Mark Kinsley
that’s gonna help, especially when you go shopping. So have you gone shopping for appliances? Yeah. Has that been one of the boxes? You’ve checked?
Adrienne Woods
No, I have not physically walked into a store. But we have met with four builders and like their second question, kind of after they get the plans is they said, Okay, your appliances? I mean, it’s a very high cat. It’s a category that they put a lot of money into. And based on your preferences, they need to know how much money to a lot for that allowance. So they’re always like, do you want, you know, generic, just like right off the shelf appliances? Or are we talking like Thermador and Wolf brand appliances? And so we have to have that discussion on what products are important to me, and what brand or what functionality do I want out of them? Because it get $6,000 allowance? It could be a $26,000? I mean, you just never know.
Mark Kinsley
Yeah, but of course that gets financed into the cost of the home. And that was one of the insights that we got from Robert Kohler and monogram. And of course monogram was probably part of that conversation for a lot of builders, a lot of designers. And one of the things we’ve picked up on as we stood there in front of their new product that they rolled out pretty recently, which is the 48 inch Pro range was just that pause on that for a moment, a 48 inch range. So you have to design the home, the larger with appliance. And if you don’t have that footprint, and you’re getting ready to buy new appliances for your home, you would have to go into a situation where you could work with a contractor or a demo crew of some some sort remodeler to come in and carve out that footprint for a larger appliance like that. So I’m sure you’re having a lot of these conversations around dimensions and scale and luxury or what you want to put put in as part of your luxury appliance packages. So,
Adrienne Woods
absolutely, because you’re absolutely right. And it all starts like the first thing you do in building a home is you have to have a plan. And I did not realise how detailed stuff like that has to be like how big of a range do you want, because if we’re drawing it, I need to draw it, how you want it to be built. And it’s not going to do you any good if you get to the building phase, and you’re like, my range is not going to fit in this design that we created. That’s why I think it’s such an early on conversation.
Mark Kinsley
And this is one of the insights that we picked up from raw from Robert, we got some audio that we gathered at the nationwide primetime show, we’re gonna play that for you. And a lot of these insights one of them you just described, which is, whenever people are redoing their kitchens, and buying appliances in the luxury category, a lot of times they’re redoing the entire kitchen, not onesie. twosie. So where are you put your focus from a marketing and business development standpoint matters. Without further ado, and thank you, again, Robert Kohler with monogram, our consumer
Robert Koller
The luxury consumer if they, you know, household income, usually upwards of 300 $400,000, their houses are easily worth two to two plus million dollars. So they’re, you know, when they’re purchasing appliances, they’re redoing your whole kitchen for the most part, right, they’re not buying onesie twosie it’s not a replacement, unless they already have monogram in their, in their kitchen. But for the most part, it’s actually doing the kitchen, the consumer that we have on monitor, and we always talked about them being very exploratory, they like to take chances on what they’re cooking, they’ve travelled a lot, they bring in a lot of influences from that from where they’ve been. And so those people are, you know, really understanding what they’re doing in the kitchen, they don’t need a lot of help. But anything like sauces or things like that are very delicate, like chocolates, they’ll know that they need to cook it in a certain degree. And it just gives you peace of mind that you know that you know, it’s the difference between high, medium and low is so kind of just nebulous, it’s nebulous, right. And so being able to understand that and have a degree that you’re cooking it I think gives them the feeling power troll. One of the things coming in to the you know, for marketing for monogram that I had to learn is that these people do cook a lot. You know, I come in thinking, you know, they have a lot of money, they have a butler or chef, personal chef, no, these are the people that are usually kind of the breadwinners of the bigger family extended family. And so they’re having all the anniversaries, first communions Easter Christmas at their house because they have the house that’s big enough to pose all of the people that are in their family, but they’re also cooking for all them as well and they want to make sure that they can show off and, and then again, when they’re just doing daily dinners for their family, they’re pushing the envelope, they’re trying new things. So I think understanding that consumer and being able to converse with them about what they’re looking for and understanding that, you know, kitchen centrepiece of their home and either they’re looking for like I talked about with the trends and for it to fade away or fade away and then have a nice centrepiece that really stands out in the kitchen. That’s a central piece that people are talking about. So kind of understanding that is really important for that kid, for them to be able to talk and understand that consumer.
Mark Kinsley
What stood out about that to you, Adrienne?
Adrienne Woods
the part that resonates with me the most is talking about how people in their family, even if they’re not, you know, the matriarch or the patriarch of the family, like my parents, my home has become the centre point for everybody to gather and I don’t even have the bigger home like my parents, my childhood home is about, I would say 500 square feet larger but it was built in the 80s. So it’s a lot of smaller rooms, whereas my house is just more of an open floor plan because it was built in the early 2000s. And so everybody congregates here. And so by virtue of that I’m the person that often is the one cooking most of the meals even if people bring sides it’s still like well Adrian has the oven. So let’s give her the stuff that is going to you know require to be heated and we pull out all at the same time. And so when we’re designing our kitchen in our new house, I have designed it with the intent that we will continue to have family gatherings all in the kitchen right and I’m the oldest of five so you multiply everybody that plus as a plus one so now we’re at 10 Plus my parents is 12 and then you still have kids so it needs to be a big space and I want it to be comfortable for people to be in that space as well.
Mark Kinsley
That was a good pause point for me as well. You know thinking about you know, the the monogram, the 48 inch Pro range. You know what some of the stuff that Robert pointed out to me as I was there, it has the iconic monogram brass handles, it has the true temp, which you work with the Heston’s que pan you can get it dialled into the exact degree and he was talking about all these different things. But then he got into this idea that you know, people buying luxury appliances and that that 48 inch Pro range costs 15,000 bucks right now and that’s just one appliance of many, like you said when people are redoing an entire kitchen or building a new home. And then he got into this idea that these are the gathering places for the family, they have the space, they have all of the different You know, cookware that you would need to put together a fantastic meal. So they tend to be, I think he called it the breadwinner of the larger family. Yeah. And then you get into these dynamics that you described of like, what is the best use of a modern space? You know, where are people going to gather. So I think that’s a really good insight for marketers, and for people in a business development role within a furniture, mattress appliances, store, selling appliances is these, these these hubs that that families create, they’re, they’re being used, it’s not just a showpiece, you know, people are getting their hands dirty, they’ve travelled, they like to cook cooking shows are all the rage these days. So I think it’s a really good good moment to realise, as you’re creating your messaging, as you’re creating your marketing. It’s all about family. And it’s all about gathering.
Adrienne Woods
Well, and I think to also kind of to give somebody a takeaway, when you’re talking about, you know, 48 inch ranges, you need to start networking with builders, and architects and realtors, and just people in this space, because they’re the ones that are going to be having these discussions with the end consumer. I haven’t gone to a store yet, but I already know that we’re setting my appliance allowance budget and like the $30,000 range, because what I’m looking at from a whole package perspective is going to be in that range. I never had, I have yet to walk into a store. So for people like monogram and these other bigger brands, start making these relationships early because the builders and the architects are the ones having the conversation and getting people’s expectations set up for the ultimate purchase.
Mark Kinsley
Cool, great insights. Thank you so much to monogram thank you to Robert Kohler, Robert knew that he was going to be part of the fam at some way. I don’t think that he knew he was going to be on the fam Marketing Show. So we’ll have to have him back in an official capacity at some point. All right, we’ve got a trivia question. We’ve got to close the loop on hit us with it one more time. And then I’ve got my guess,
Adrienne Woods
okay, who said people don’t buy what you do? They buy why you do it. So our options were Simon Sinek. Steve Jobs, Seth Gordon and Ray Kennedy.
Mark Kinsley
Yep. Seth Godin. Right. No, that’s not my guess. Okay, so I guess who’s you’re? My guest is Simon Sinek. The master of why start with why is the name of his book. It’s got to be Simon Sinek. Right.
Adrienne Woods
It is indeed.
Mark Kinsley
All right. I think that’s coming through on the podium number they got it right as well. So thanks for chiming in and go over to fam dot news. And you could text us right from the website there. So please do that. It’s great way to get connected as well. All right. Adrian, take us out on the show. Take us out on this fine day.
Adrienne Woods
All right. All right. So if you have a marketing tip that’s worked for you emails that fan at Mark marketing at fan dot news. Be sure to subscribe so that you never miss an idea that could make you a mark when
Mark Kinsley
almost as great as Robert Kohler. monogramming is
Adrienne Woods
all right. Join us each week as we bring you more fam marketing magic.
