Please help Small Business Shop Fire

My name is Lisa, and I’m the owner of TwistedAllure. Here at TwistedAllure we make fun and colorful spooky cute bath products. We have been in business about 6 years, and have thousands of happy spooky customers. Unfortunately we have had one of my worst nightmares happen. There was a huge fire at my shop that has gutted my entire 2nd floor and the bottom. As a business owner, I have been terrified of having a fire at my shop, so much so, that I go around at the end of the day unplugging things. My shop has everything in it that I’ve worked so hard for, and never in a million years did I think this would happen.

For me, my business is my life. I have built this business from literally nothing but a love for horror, an idea and big dreams. With No savings and no money, I basically took the risk to show the world what I could create. Already working full time on my prior business, (making handmade invitations) I then used what little money I had left, to fund TwistedAllure full time in 2016. It’s everything I have worked so hard to build for so many years.And Theres nothing more traumatizing to a business owner .. then waking up at 5am from a phone call from my ADT security system dispatcher, asking me if I was aware that my shop was on fire. As I looked at my mom, Shocked was an understatement. I was devastated.

After rushing to my shop, after getting the call I had to wait outside for a couple hours before I could go in to see what had happened. Not knowing what was lost, I imagined the worst. Upstairs was where we did all my marketing. Very expensive cameras, lights, props, etc. everything we used to make videos and take photos for my business. Not only was all of that upstairs, I also had my entire Halloween collection. A collection that I have been collecting for many many years. I’m not saying that “things” are most important in life. But as a Halloween lover, I did hold those things very dear to my heart. I used all my Halloween collection for props for my business as well, being that I have a spooky Halloween themed business year round. Most of my collection I unfortunately can not even buy again.

Not only did I lose about $300,00.00 upstairs, between all my marketing and Halloween collection. Downstairs was pretty bad as well. Downstairs had flooded from the fireman putting the fire out upstairs. The ceiling had fallen and ruined everything in that room. That room was my bath bomb room. It’s where we kept all the bath bombs that were made, ready to be painted, and also finished and ready to sell. We had about maybe 10 bakers racks in there of bath bombs, and about almost $100,000 in bath bombs... that got ruined. Flooded. If you know anything about bath bombs, they hate water. If you have noticed, we haven’t been able to stock bath bombs on the site since the Beginning of the year. Not only was it the products that got damaged, but all the painting supplies, packaging supplies, racks, labels, colorants, ingredients... gone. Everything was destroyed and had to be thrown away.

Pretty much everything from this fire was unable to save. Between everything being burned, flooded or smoke damaged, unfortunately it was a loss. Not only that but more bad news... we didn’t have enough insurance to cover much of anything. Not even half of my stuff. And not even half of that.

As devastating as this all was for me, all I could think about was keeping the business going, with what I had left. If you know me at all, I am I very hard worker and I take pride in my work ethic. Nothing would stop me from continuing on from this unfortunate disaster. After both fire inspectors came back, with no conclusion on how the fire started, there was nothing that could be done. Everything was gone.

This did happen back in February, just right before my birthday. If you remember we had t shit the website down for almost a month for a family emergency, well this is why. I wanted to be strong and try to just go on with business as usual. I’m not the type of person to ask for help, so I did keep this tragedy in private. I was planning on just moving forward and rebuilding. But as the months go on, things are getting harder with expenses, and feel the need to reach out for help before we get behind even more. We have had to spend all of the businesses savings to help rebuild that part of the business that burned. We had to put any future plans to the side as we were almost ready to open up a store front as well as other big plans.

While our goal is set at only $70,000 and doesn’t cover much of what was lost, we are just trying to raise as much as we can at this point to help cover expenses and to re purchase our marketing equipment, business supplies, office supplies, bath bomb supplies, redo the break room and studio etc... and try to replace anything We can.

If you don’t want to donate, every order that is placed on our website also helps with paying expenses as well. If you are not able to donate financially, it costs nothing to share this fundraiser on social media. Please, share anywhere that you can, to spread the word. Anything you can donate, is to help ensure we can continue to stay in business and keep bringing you the spooky products you love. We all here at TwistedAllure greatly appreciate any help. Thank you!