When Martin Goebel walks into his St. Louis furniture business each morning, he peels back the blue tarps he used to cover his machines and half-finished furniture the night before.
He’d much rather be sketching designs, brainstorming with clients and making new pieces for his business, Goebel Furniture. But his creative work and growth plans have taken a back seat since 2021, when, he said, a storm tore through his building, leaving lasting damage and, as he puts it, thrusting him into a legal battle with his insurance provider.
The storm ripped off part of his roof, exposing the space to every weather event since then, Goebel said. In St. Louis, that’s no small threat — the city experiences 40 to 50 days of thunderstorms a year, according to the National Weather Service.
“It’s one of the most heartbreaking things to wake up at 2 in the morning and hear rain falling,” Goebel said.
Even tougher for Goebel: He said his “Made in America” company could benefit from President Donald Trump’s tariffs on foreign imports were it not for his insurance struggle. Goebel Furniture was offered several large and highly lucrative contracts, but Goebel said he had to turn them down because of the deteriorated condition of the business’ facility and equipment.
“Under normal circumstances, they would have been transformative. But instead, we’ve been effectively held hostage by Cincinnati Insurance,” he said. “What we’re dealing with is not the disaster of the storm; it’s the disaster of the insurance that’s supposed to protect us from the storm.”
Goebel said his policy with Cincinnati Insurance Co. included $1 million in coverage for the building and $200,000 for business personal property. But he claims the company isn’t holding up its part of the deal. Since he sued the insurer in 2021, he has been locked in a legal fight that is headed to court for a jury trial on Aug. 18.
Since he filed his claim, he has received about $50,000 from Cincinnati Insurance — a small fraction of the amount needed to repair the roof and get his business back to the condition it was before that initial storm, Goebel said. He said the money stretched only far enough for tarps, to replace some machinery and make other temporary fixes. Goebel said it’s difficult to estimate exactly how much it would cost to get his business back to where it was because of ongoing, escalating damage to the roof, the inside of the building, equipment and projects since then.
“Every time it rains, it gets a little bit worse and a little bit worse and there’s a new leak somewhere else,” Goebel said.
In a statement to NBC News, Cincinnati Insurance said, “We believe in paying claims quickly and fairly, and we pay billions of dollars in covered claims each year.” While it said it can’t comment specifically on Goebel’s case, it says in a court filing that based on its experts’ inspections, “the existence of hail or wind damage is an open question of fact.”
Goebel counters by saying he and his own experts insist a storm was clearly the cause. NBC News’ Climate Unit confirmed a hailstorm did hit St. Louis during the period Goebel claimed.
“If you buy furniture from me, I can’t just all of a sudden say: ‘Seems expensive. I’m not going to deliver that today.’ It’s unacceptable,” he said. “There’s empirical data as to why this has happened. There’s color weather radar; there’s physical damage. It’s a pure decision.”
That decision, Goebel said, has had devastating consequences. He laid off 75% of his staff and said he took on a second job as an adjunct professor at Washington University to support his business, as well as his wife and baby at home.
“It’s killing me. This company is my livelihood,” Goebel said. “The idea that after all of that education, after all of that effort, after all the sleepless nights, after all the dirt that comes off you in the shower, the thing that’s going to take me down is my insurance company? That’s insanity.”
Cincinnati Insurance is the lead subsidiary of Cincinnati Financial Corp., which reported Monday that its second-quarter profit more than doubled to $685 million, driven by higher premiums and investment income.
Goebel’s case, which was featured on “NBC Nightly News with Tom Llamas” this month, is getting attention in high places. St. Louis Mayor Cara Spencer reached out to him after she saw a video he posted on social media of water pouring into his building during a recent storm.
“He is well known throughout our community as being a top-notch furniture producer. There is no doubt about that,” she said. “This was me going: ‘Oh my God. This is one of our most successful local small businesses that can’t operate because of a failure of his insurance company.’ I mean, it’s truly horrifying.”
The office of Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., has also been in contact with Goebel. As chair of the Senate Homeland Security subcommittee that oversees disaster management, Hawley held a hearing in May intended to expose insurance fraud by major corporations.
Missing out on ‘America First’
Goebel, in the meantime, wonders what might have been. He believes his business could have been a model for a potential American manufacturing revival under Trump’s “America First” economic and trade policies.
But he said his fight with Cincinnati Insurance cost his company millions of dollars in lost revenue, as he has been forced to spend time and money working around the damage and not innovating or growing. He declined to share the company’s annual revenue because of the ongoing litigation.
Goebel holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in fine arts and had an apprenticeship with the legendary woodworker James Krenov. He returned to his hometown to open his own “Made in America” furniture company nearly 15 years ago.
While many competitors import materials and outsource manufacturing overseas, Goebel said, his company is built on using American materials to create high-quality products. He said he has made large workspaces for Nike, corporate conference tables for Tommy Bahama and even a throne for a chieftainess in Zambia.
“I built this company with the explicit goal of being a nimble, forward-looking American manufacturer — designed to respond quickly to market shifts like those created by the tariff changes,” he said. He believes the government should be helping more with public investment and support in situations like his faceoff with Cincinnati Insurance.
“Manufacturers like us are ready — we have the expertise, the infrastructure and the ambition to expand,” he said.
