“We are so lucky”: Community keeps small business founders going after blaze tears through Melbourne warehouse

Ashli Templer turned to her closest friends after a Melbourne warehouse fire torched her skincare business’ stock. Now, Templer says a broader community of loyal customers is pitching in to help Yours Only recover from the devastating blaze.

Templer was preparing for her hen’s weekend when arsonists lit the Future Fulfilment warehouse alight on Thursday night, causing $2 million in structural damages and destroying around $70,000 of Yours Only’s specialty skincare products.

Her business is one of more than 70 with stock damaged or destroyed by the deliberately lit Clayton South blaze, which Victoria Police suspect was targeted at the e-commerce shipping centre. Investigations are ongoing.

Speaking to SmartCompany, the founder says her hen’s weekend was an opportunity for her to regroup with loved ones, before launching into her recovery plan (disclosure: Templer and the author of this article are former colleagues).

Phase one is connecting with fans, who may live with allergies and intolerances barring them from mainstream skincare offerings.

“I absolutely love our community, so I thought it would be the perfect time to connect with them on a deeper level,” she said.

“I decided to work up a questionnaire so they could share their health journeys with me — the next step is to go through them and jump on Zooms.”

News of the fire, and Yours Only’s outreach, led to a wave of customer support. After initially putting the Yours Only website on standby, Templer says the company is responding to fans by reopening its site for pre-orders.

“We are so lucky to have such a dedicated community,” she said. “Everyone is telling me how much the brand has changed their lives, which has kept me going.”

Now, Yours Only is one of a handful of affected businesses relying on those preorders to stay afloat.

Templer says the enterprise “will be down so much” financially in the months ahead, while the website is in pre-order-only mode and Yours Only waits for new deliveries.

“I do have content insurance, but the cost to reorder everything, with minimum order quantities is far greater than the cost of goods I lost,” Templer added.

“I don’t have disruption insurance either (lesson learned), but I will get through it with our incredible community.”

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Clementine Beale, founder of bath salt and magnesium spray business Salt Lab, says the company’s website has also reopened for presales.

Like Yours Only, Beale says Salt Lab is facing a long road to recovery.

“I am in complete shock, this has been the hardest few days in business,” Beale wrote on social media.

“I started Salt Lab 7 years ago and have put everything into it since that day, to wake up and find out we have lost everything is gut wrenching.

“To top it off, we weren’t covered for fire in our insurance policy, lesson learned.”

Speaking to The Age, Future Fulfilment co-owner Noah Hunter reflected on how significant the blaze will be for the businesses it works with.

“It’s shattering because although it affects us, it’s really these small businesses that we service that are really out here,” he said.

“This is everything to them, their stock.”