Can the American casket monopoly be disrupted? Today, two companies control 82% of all casket sales in the United States. But can a new crop of more affordable and sustainable options shake things up? Issue #85 MICHAEL WATERS AsBen Franklinonce quipped, death is one of the only certainties in life. And with that certainty comes an endless supply of customers. Every year,2.8mpeople die in the US. Around 40% of them opt to be buried — most commonly, in a casket. A$550m-per-year business, caskets make up a healthy portion of the much larger$20Bdeath industry. The market for burials has never been more flooded with options. You can now spend your post-life years buried in abodysuit fashioned out of mushrooms, in apod that turns you into a tree, or in anIKEA-style casket you assemble yourself. Whatever your post-mortem niche, there’s probably a startup for it. But despite this abundance of businesses, efforts to re-envision the casket industry have largely fallen flat. That’s because today, the vast majority of people who opt to bury a loved one buy awooden casketfrom a traditional funeral home — a market that is almost entirely monopolized by two industry behemoths: Batesville (a subsidiary of the even bigger Hillenbrand Inc.) and Matthews International Corporation. Together, these two companies claim a whopping82% market share, making the casket industry one of themost consolidatedsectors of the US economy. How did this happen? And why has this particular industry been so resistant to change? The origins of a monopoly The for-profit casket industry traces back to the mid-18th century when cabinet makersbegan advertisingcasket services alongside their regular furniture work. In the late 1800s, the Civil War (and, strangely, theembalmingof President Lincoln’s body)spawneda mass production of caskets. Across the country, hundreds of regional casket-making operations sprang up to meet the public’s new demand. Among them was Batesville, a small manufacturer launched in 1884 by a handful of craftsmen in Indiana. acquiringthese small casket brands in a bid to consolidate the market. In 1906, his son, John A. Hillenbrand, bought the struggling Batesville andresurrectedit into a profit machine. As a subsidiary of Hillenbrand, Batesville became a powerhouse. By World War II, the company waschurning outthousands of caskets for the US military. Decades later, another company called Matthews began a consolidation effort of its own, snatching up the casket giantsThe York Group(2001) andAurora Casket Company. According to the Casket & Funeral Supply Association of America (CFSA), there were more than700casket companies in 1950; by the early 2000s, that figure had been whittled down to 147. Today, Batesville and Matthews dominate the market, making up for more than 8 of every 10 casket sales in the US. They have grown so powerful that they are able to charge thousands of dollars for wood and metal boxes. The average casket in the US costs around $2.3k,accordingto funeral industry comparison site Parting.com. But there is wide variability in that figure: At Batesville, the most coveted casketsnet as much as $45k. Someestimatessuggest that the final price of a casket is anywhere from 300% to 500% more than the cost of making it. 2019 IBISWorld report, 82% of caskets are purchased through funeral homes, who capitalize on mourning families by selling them the most expensive products they carry. declaredthe law unconstitutional, on the grounds that it violated the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Bloomberg Businessweek story. “As long as that funeral homeowner owed Batesville money, Batesville owned the showroom.” Batesville has crafted an entire rewards system around keeping funeral directors loyal. “The Batesville guys might be giving away tickets for ball games or all these little perks,” says Malamas. “They’ll give you a $3k vacation.” A 2005 Forbes articlereportedthat Batesville was “wining and dining” its funeral directors, flying them to its 657-acre Indiana property Jawacdah Farms and offering them local shrimp and chocolate bars in the shape of caskets. slewof antitrustlawsuits— but the company has consistently emerged victorious. Neither Batesville nor Matthews responded toThe Hustle’s requests for comment. All of this is grave news for any death industry entrepreneur bent on disrupting caskets. As things currently stand, there is only one true threat to the dominance of Batesville and Matthews, and it doesn’t come from within the casket industry at all. The great equalizer It may be that the true space for innovation isn’t in caskets, but cremation. Forty years ago, less than 10% of Americans opted for cremation. This year, that figure will hit nearly55%— and by 2040, the National Funeral Directors Association estimates it could near 80%. cost: Cremations rarely top $2k, whereas casket burials can enter the five figures. As cremation rates have risen, casket sales have shrunk: In 2014, they topped $700m; last year, they were $550m, a 21% decline. Add in the growing number ofovercrowded cemeteries, which is making casket burials impossible, and the industry’s overall prognosis seems grim. “Consumers today are cremating bodies instead of burying them,” Crouch says. “They don’t want what they perceive as a funeral product. The whole funeral experience has changed.” In theory, a well-funded casket startup could build relationships with funeral directors by supplying fast delivery across the country. But competing with Batesville — a firm with a well-oiled, sophisticated delivery system and tight contacts — seems like an uphill battle. Consumer shifts away from burial are poised to make Batesville rethink its business. The company has alreadybegun to adddozens of urns to its catalog. But as Crouch puts it, at the end of the day, “they’re 30 years behind the times.” Even so, Batesville will be able to coast on the same assurance that is insulating it from casket upstarts today: People don't want to think about death. In moments of grief, they stick to what they know. The company might be behind the times, but consumers aren't necessarily paying attention. In death, as in physics, inertia is strong.
Not a funeral director or anything but... Generally people who are dead aren't really shopping for the best deals, and people die infrequently in families so the next time a death in the family comes around you've hopefully forgotten how expensive it was. There's also rules around how quickly someone needs to be buried and so you'd be selling your startup caskets to people who are still alive - for this the monopolies probably offer a payment plan so where's the benefit? You wouldn't have the production facility to turn out cheap coffins quickly in time for people who didn't buy one ahead of time. More saliently people are getting cremated more and I'd imagine space in funeral lots is coming at a premium considering how many people live in your average town vs. how many plots of land are allocated to storing caskets. You probably have regulations on that since you know just putting your deceased love one anywhere is major health risk to everyone still alive.