Michi Kustra
Urns in Style Founder

Chicagoan Michi Kustra had a great career with the global ad agency Leo Burnett in Chicago.  She was building a corporate resume by climbing up the ladder working in e-commerce as a senior level marketing and merchandising executive.  Clients of hers included Spiegel Catalog, retailer Herman Miller, and high end office furniture company Office Designs.

Then, a friend of her’s husband was diagnosed with cancer and she found out he wanted to be cremated.  Kustra, who was born and raised in Japan, then started searching for an urn to give to the family.  According to an article in the Los Angeles Japanese Daily News, Kustra found the offerings disappointing and described them as “containers with no aesthetics”.  She then believed that there was space in the market for a more creative brand and eventually quit her corporate job to launch her own company, “Urns In Style”.

She describes her line of urns as those that come in a variety of shapes, colors and finishes including glass, ceramic, wood, and metal with themes that are suitable for a man, woman, or pet.  In addition to her standard in-stock urns Kustra has a line that she labels “Design Your Own” which will be hand created from a drawing from a client.  Kustra notes that  Urns in Style is recording rapid growth fueled by a clientele “who seek cremation urns that are created uniquely for their loved one, not for anybody else.

Funeral Director Daily take:   If you have not noticed we are in “changing times” in funeral service.  Not so long ago the local funeral director had a corner on the consumer market for merchandise such as caskets, vaults, and urns.  Then others started getting in on the action — cemeteries decided they could get a margin by offering the vault when they sold a cemetery lot — beating the at need funeral director to the punch.

Pretty soon the large retailers such as Costco realized that they could have a pretty good retail margin by selling caskets at a keystone mark-up because funeral directors were marking them up 2.5 – 3 times wholesale cost.  Finally, even though the profits, in raw dollars were not so much in an urn sale, the funeral director purchased from a supplier, sold at a retail price, and owned the market.

Today, many of those merchandise profits are now gone to third party marketers.  I don’t think the genie can ever be put back in the bottle for the funeral director to control these markets any more, but we can sure work to plug the dike.

Pricing and Pre-Need are the watch-words that can help you keep some of those margins at home.  With pricing, how about offering a cremation services package that includes an urn in the price.  Have a basic urn in the price at no additional price – maybe one wood or one ceramic – and have an up charge for selecting a finer urn.  That way you could tell families that your basic charge includes an urn so there is no reason to shop any where else for one.

Pre-Need is another opportunity where you have the chance to lock in a sale of a casket, vault, and/or urn.  Don’t have such high prices on these products that you encourage consumers to shop around.  Put your price point on services that no one else can provide and make a little less on the merchandise and I’m guessing that you will keep most of these consumers from shopping around.[wpforms id=”436″ title=”true” description=”true”]