Mama Bear's Soaps aka Sue Clark

[Lindy]

I don't know how many here know Sue Clark, but she has been running a successful soap business called Mama Bear's Soaps for a while now. She has a small storefront where she sold product and has a strong foothold in the shaving soap industry through her on-line sales. Her soap kitchen was situated in her home in her basement. I say was because 2 days ago her house burned down to the ground. She had canceled her home-owner's insurance to try and save a little money shortly before this accident.

Sue lost one pet to the fire, but fortunately both her dogs made it out with her alive.

So here is why I am sharing this with you here. I have contacted MMS & Nature's Garden to see if we can set something up for us to donate to Sue's account (every dollar really does count) in order to allow Sue to start getting the materials she needs to be able to make a living. Unfortunately the world doesn't stop or even slow down when a tragedy occurs and we all need to have the ability to support ourselves as we move forward. The same holds true for Mama Bear.

I will be sending funds to both these suppliers in Sue's name and I know how generous our community is when one of our own needs us.

So for those of you that can afford to donate even $5 I will give you the full information, here, on what these two vendors set up to be able to accept funds to help her out.

Cheers
Linda

 

[maya]

i had a fire at my house when i was a teenager. everything i owned was destroyed. count me in.

 

[carebear]

Oh that's awful. Thanks for letting us know.

But surely her business insurance provides coverage for that. Mine does.

 

[AmyW]

She was probably using her homeowners as her business insurance and since she dropped it.... It's very unfortunate. I'm glad no one was hurt, but what a loss. It's a lesson to us all to keep up with insurance payments even if they hurt. I'll see what I can do to help once things are set up.



(edited to fix typos)

 

[carebear]

Wow, I didn't know you could get homeowners to provide liability insurance on stuff we sell. I'll have to look into that.

She must be beside herself.

 

[AmyW]

Some will, it's one of the things I briefly have looked at for starting my own business (repeating myself from the business forum: not going to do it for a long time, if I do at all).

 

[Deda]

Homeowners insurance MAY cover your inventory and equipment for a home-based business. But no way would it cover product liability.

 

[AmyW]

Thank you for clarifying that Deda

 

[Lindy]

::UPDATE::

Sue had canceled her insurance 10 days before the fire. It turns out after meeting with the that when you cancel insurance you have a 20 day grace period before you have no coverage. The bank has made the insurance company step up to the plate and she does have coverage!!!

Here in Canada if you don't have Commercial Liability insurance above and beyond your homeowners insurance the house insurance people will cancel you policy even without anything going wrong. All that needs to happen is they get wind of it. Of course I don't know how US insurance companies are, but just thought I should throw that out there....

 

[agriffin]

::UPDATE::

Sue had canceled her insurance 10 days before the fire. It turns out after meeting with the that when you cancel insurance you have a 20 day grace period before you have no coverage. The bank has made the insurance company step up to the plate and she does have coverage!!!

Here in Canada if you don't have Commercial Liability insurance above and beyond your homeowners insurance the house insurance people will cancel you policy even without anything going wrong. All that needs to happen is they get wind of it. Of course I don't know how US insurance companies are, but just thought I should throw that out there....

When I was shopping around for insurance for making soap out of my home...my insurance made it clear if my home became damaged related to my soapmaking business they would not cover it if I did not have separate liability insurance for my business. And even eluded to dropping me for this reason. So it sounds like my insurance was similar to your Canada insurance.

I really wouldn't be suprised if her insurance get's wind of what happened and doesn't cover her. Especially since she's been so vocal about it being a soaping accident that caused the fire.

 

[krissy]

i am so glad she is ok!

what happened with soaping that caused the fire?

 

[agriffin]

she was melting mp in the microwave, went upstairs and it caught on fire...

 

[SideDoorSoaps]

When I was shopping around for insurance for making soap out of my home...my insurance made it clear if my home became damaged related to my soapmaking business they would not cover it if I did not have separate liability insurance for my business. And even eluded to dropping me for this reason. So it sounds like my insurance was similar to your Canada insurance.

I really wouldn't be suprised if her insurance get's wind of what happened and doesn't cover her. Especially since she's been so vocal about it being a soaping accident that caused the fire.

I had the same problem with my insurance company about making soap in my house. I couldn't believe they said that they would drop us if they found out. The agent was very specific too about what if the house caught on fire from making soap. My homeowner's didn't cover manufacturing products at all and he said that we wouldn't find any that would. We did thankfully.

Sorry to hear about the accident. It's beyond unfortunate.

 

[Deda]

When I was shopping around for insurance for making soap out of my home...my insurance made it clear if my home became damaged related to my soapmaking business they would not cover it if I did not have separate liability insurance for my business. And even eluded to dropping me for this reason. So it sounds like my insurance was similar to your Canada insurance.

I really wouldn't be suprised if her insurance get's wind of what happened and doesn't cover her. Especially since she's been so vocal about it being a soaping accident that caused the fire.

I had the same problem with my insurance company about making soap in my house. I couldn't believe they said that they would drop us if they found out. The agent was very specific too about what if the house caught on fire from making soap. My homeowner's didn't cover manufacturing products at all and he said that we wouldn't find any that would. We did thankfully.

Sorry to hear about the accident. It's beyond unfortunate.

To be clear - you found a homeowners policy that covers product liability? One that you can add an additional insured and receive an ACORD certificate?

Not just a HO policy that will cover your business equipment, products in your possession and damage to your home.

 

[SideDoorSoaps]

Nope, Deda, didn't find anything that covered product liability directly, had to go through RLI for that. We had to find an insurance company that didn't forbid us to make soap in the house for property damage in the course of making soap.