If your name is on it, you are the manufacturer.
That sentence is the whole subject. You designed a product, someone else made it, and it sells under your brand. From a liability standpoint the person who actually built it is not the one a plaintiff will look at first. You are.
This catches people because the arrangement feels like reselling. You are not running a factory. You placed an order, approved a sample, and put your label on the box. But a consumer injured by that product sues the name on the box, and the manufacturer is frequently overseas, dissolved, or beyond practical reach.
Product liability is the coverage that answers it, and for a private label business it is not an accessory to general liability. It is the point.
Where private label businesses get this wrong
Assuming the manufacturer’s coverage protects you. It may protect them. Whether it reaches you depends entirely on whether you are named as an additional insured on their policy, whether that endorsement exists in writing, and whether their carrier will even respond to a claim in the United States. A foreign manufacturer’s certificate is often worth very little in a Florida courtroom.
Assuming a supply agreement solves it. Indemnification from your manufacturer is worth exactly as much as the manufacturer’s ability to pay and your ability to enforce it. Against a domestic supplier with real assets, that is meaningful. Against an overseas contract manufacturer, it is frequently theoretical.
Assuming pre-revenue means no exposure. Coverage is generally required before you have a problem, and it is also required before most of the places you want to sell will take you.
Your buyers will require it before your customers do
This is usually what brings people to the question, and it arrives sooner than expected.
Retailers, distributors, and marketplaces impose insurance requirements on suppliers, commonly a million per occurrence with a two million aggregate, sometimes higher, with the buyer named as additional insured and often vendors broad form coverage extending your policy to protect them for claims arising from your product.
If you are selling direct to consumer today and plan to move into wholesale, that requirement is coming. Getting the coverage structured for it now costs the same as getting it structured badly.
Underwriting will ask what the product actually is
Appetite varies enormously by product category, and the honest answer is that some categories are straightforward and others are difficult.
Ingestibles and anything consumed — supplements, food, beverages, anything with a health claim — draw the most scrutiny and the narrowest markets.
Products that burn, heat, or are heated — candles, lighters, vaporizers, electrical appliances — carry fire exposure that underwriters price carefully.
Anything applied to the body — cosmetics, skincare, personal care — brings reaction and sensitization claims.
Tobacco, hemp, and adjacent categories have their own set of markets, and appetite moves with regulation. What was placeable last year may not be this year.
Children’s products are their own conversation entirely.
None of that means a product cannot be insured. It means the market matters more than the price, and a broker with a narrow set of carriers will either quote you badly or tell you it cannot be done.
What underwriters will want to know
Have this ready and the process takes days rather than weeks.
What the product is, in detail, and what it is made of. Who manufactures it, where, and whether they carry their own coverage. Your projected sales, by channel, and whether you sell outside the United States. What testing or certification the product has. What your labeling and warnings say. Whether you have had any complaints, returns for safety reasons, or recalls.
That last one matters even where nothing went wrong. A business that can show it tracks complaints is a different risk from one that cannot.
Recall is a separate coverage
Product liability responds when someone is harmed. It does not pay to get the product back.
A recall — notifying customers, retrieving inventory, disposing of it, and replacing it — is its own cost, and product recall coverage is a separate purchase. For a business whose entire inventory could be affected by a single batch problem, that is a meaningful exposure.
Worth asking about specifically, because it is rarely offered unprompted.
Storing inventory at home is a problem
A great many private label businesses start with product in a garage or a spare room, and both the product and the operation sit outside a homeowners policy.
A homeowners form excludes business property above a small sublimit and excludes business liability almost entirely. So inventory destroyed by a water loss is not covered, and a delivery driver injured at the house is a difficult conversation.
This is fixable and inexpensive. It just has to be deliberate, and it is one of the first things we look at with a startup brand.
Worth confirming
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Whether you carry product liability, distinct from general liability, and at what limits
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Whether your manufacturer’s policy names you as additional insured, in writing
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Whether your supply agreement’s indemnity is enforceable in practice
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Whether vendors broad form coverage is available for the retailers you sell to
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Whether product recall coverage is in place
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Whether inventory stored at a residence is covered
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Whether your coverage follows sales outside the United States
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Whether every product line and category is disclosed, including anything added since binding
We place hard product classes
Prestige Insurance Group works with product brands across Florida, including private label, white label, and contract-manufactured goods sold direct to consumer and through wholesale.
We work with more than a hundred carriers and wholesale markets, which is what this class requires. Appetite varies sharply by product category and moves with regulation, and the difference between an easy placement and a declination is often which market saw the submission rather than anything about the business.
Tell us what the product is, who makes it, and where you sell it. We will tell you what the market looks like before you commit to anything.
Miami: 305-969-8776 Orlando: 407-993-2331
General information only, not legal advice. Coverage forms, carrier appetite, and regulatory requirements vary and change over time; refer to your own policy and seek qualified advice on supply agreements and indemnity provisions.
