How One Casket Company Is Trying to Disrupt the Industry By Making It Cheaper to Be Dead Titan Casket is marketing a more affordable funeral (with a little help from Taylor Swift.)
By Dan Bova
First you die, then you go broke? Talk about adding insult to injury.
The average American funeral costs about $10,000, with the casket typically more than $2,000, according to CBS News. This can present a dilemma for grieving families putting loved ones to rest, forcing them to scrounge together money for a coffin that ultimately is going to get buried and never seen again.
This is the problem that the co-founders of Titan Casket have set out to solve. The self-proclaimed "Warby Parker of the funeral industry" sells their coffins at an average price of just $1,000. How did they bury higher price tags? Titan co-founder Scott Ginsberg says the secret is they avoid high markups by selling directly to customers.
"Most families in the U.S. only go to a funeral home when they suffer a loss, and they end up not getting what they want and spending too much money," co-founder Joshua Siegel told Cheddar. "Unlike other major purchases, they don't shop around, but we think it doesn't have to be this way."
"There are two large casket manufacturers that control 85% of production, and they only sell to funeral homes," says Siegel. "And when a family walks into a funeral home, they're often not shopping around. They don't know what things should cost. Those dynamics over time have meant that there's massive markups on caskets."
Related: Ex-Funeral Home Owner Sentenced to 20 Years in Federal Prison for Selling Body Parts
Going direct to consumers has its price benefits, but presents a major challenge: not many social media users are super-psyched to get marketing messages that make them complicate their own death. To combat the ultimate-bummer vibe, Titan's executive team said their messaging has been crafted about cost education rather than the inevitability of shuffling off this mortal coil.
"We see ourselves more as providing a service and an education for people who contact us," co-founder Liz Siegel told CBS News. "We want everybody ultimately to feel like they have had a choice."
Visitors to Titan Casket might feel a little queasy with the pop-up discount offers they get for their final resting place, but if you need a little pick me up, Taylor Swift featured one of their caskets in the video for her song "Anti-Hero." So maybe your loved ones can use all of the money they save on your coffin to finally snag some Swift tix?
