Designers Share Their Secrets for Nabbing Appliances During a Global Slowdown

“It has been a delivery nightmare for the entire industry,” West Coast designer Barclay Butera says about the efforts to obtain high-end kitchen appliances for client projects in 2021, a year marked by a supply chain crisis and worker shortage, as well as other challenges. And, if comment threads on Instagram, Facebook, and other such venues are to be believed, few of his colleagues would disagree.

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How is a hardworking professional to cope? Some homeowners will take it in stride if the stove they’re expecting goes MIA for a few months, but in other cases a residence needs to be made ready for move-in regardless, and a gaping hole where the espresso machine should be just won’t do. Here are a few approaches that may help if you, too, have been feeling the squeeze.

To begin with, evaluate your time frame. Appliance availability won’t necessarily be an issue. “If you’re doing a full-scale renovation, and it’s going to be a yearlong project, maybe you have the time” to get exactly what you want, AD100 designer Alex Papachristidis suggests. When the anticipated schedule is tighter, broaching the subject of possible delays early on can avert client angst later if installation dates do in fact start to slide. “We lead the conversation with managing delivery expectations,” Butera says. “Appliances and plumbing are the first thing we order in the process… And we under-promise so we can over-deliver.”

Given this year’s supply-chain woes, designers working at the luxury level might need to curb their automatic tendency to opt for the newest and shiniest model on the horizon. New York’s Richard Mishaan recently suffered a bit of self-inflicted pain on this very subject: “About a year ago, I stupidly said to one of our clients, ‘No, no, no, we don’t need to buy any of that right now, because usually there are new models, and they’re always the same sizes, and we’ll put them in.’ Then, suddenly, there was nothing.” The moral: Build your plans around the appliances you can get now. However, Papachristidis cautions, “You have to think this through at the beginning and make the decision before the cabinetry is built and the kitchen designed, because different appliances are different sizes.”

“Repair instead of replace” may likewise be a worthwhile option to contemplate, as Papachristidis did when an older oven in his own country house was acting up: “We came up with the idea of just getting the parts, even though normally we wouldn’t do that, and being on a wait list for a new oven when it comes.”

For a renovation, consider retaining the existing appliances. This particularly applies to clients who are moving into a newly completed building. Under ordinary circumstances, many designers wouldn’t think twice about sweeping away the developer’s kitchen and starting over. But in 2021, a more circumspect approach could be in order. For one condominium in Manhattan’s West Village, Mishaan reports, “We needed more cabinets, and we raised the ceiling,” to accommodate a more spacious eat-in arrangement, ”but we did keep every single appliance.”

At the very least, you’ll likely have to get out there and beat the bushes. If you’re lucky, you have a trusted vendor who can help speed the search. (Butera lauds the southern California distributor Pirch for their service under difficult conditions: “They have been magicians working with us to get the best possible lead times and solutions available.”) Still, scouring your region for all the items you need is likely to involve old-fashioned legwork. While putting together another project in Boca Raton, Florida, Mishaan recalls, “It wasn’t one-stop shopping. You had to get everybody you knew to go to stores constantly, see what you got, and schmooze people and charm them out of a microwave.”

Finally, there are reputable sources for pre-owned or refurbished appliances. One such is Renovation Angel, a 16-year-old nonprofit that specializes in recycling high-end kitchens, including appliances. “We’ve historically had a surplus of beautiful pre-owned appliances from companies like Miele, Thermador, Gaggenau, Sub-Zero, Wolf, and La Cornue,” says founder and CEO Steve Feldman. “We get showroom displays, and we get products directly from manufacturers.” Even more central to the organization’s focus, though, are appliances culled from kitchens donated by owners who are renovating or redecorating.

Renovation Angel sends teams all over the U.S. to carefully disassemble, pack, and transport luxury kitchens, bath fixtures, and other home decor back to a central facility in northern New Jersey. Designers nationwide can then shop that inventory via the organization’s website (or over the phone). Donors get a significant tax deduction, plus millions of pounds of materials end up repurposed rather than pitched into a landfill, creating a virtuous circular economy. Best of all (from a thrifty buyer’s perspective) is that many of the appliances come from the sorts of newly constructed buildings mentioned earlier. “Technically they’re called pre-owned, because they were in a residence,” Feldman says, “but some of those appliances have never been used, or have been only lightly used.”

So the upshot is that enterprising designers have alternatives, even in an appliance market that has come to seem more like a scavenger hunt. Ultimately, Papachristidis points out, your best strategy will hinge on the specifics of your project and the malleability of your clients’ mindset. They may be willing to wait, or make do, or switch horses midstream—or they may not. “At the end of the day,” he says, “when you’re dealing at a certain level, people want what they want.” Nonetheless, Butera ends on a positive note: “The entire world is seeing the ships on hold off the coasts with deliveries; no one is exempt from the chaos. But we are all in this together!”