Word: casket
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Before his death, he'd asked that the kids who had gathered petitions on his behalf sign their names on his casket. Clad in shiny parkas, jean jackets and sneakers, they autographed with magic markers in the Italian-flag colors of green and red: Riccardo, Jacopo, Eva, Alessia, all bid goodbye with messages of "Ciao!" and "Con affetto." Pastor Gioele Fuligno, a Baptist minister, led the funeral rites with a fire-and-brimstone sermon that stunned the Catholic crowd. Strangely, though, it all seemed to make sense to the 100 or so townsfolk in attendance. All of it except...
...wrong. About three-quarters of Americans make their final exit via a casket, according to the Casket & Funeral Supply Association. That will change. The Cremation Association of North America predicts that by 2025, nearly half of deaths will end in cremation. While 13% of cremations involve the use of a casket (some families choose, often at their funeral directors' urging, to conduct a traditional viewing of their loved ones before cremating their bodies), families are increasingly less likely to shell out thousands of dollars for a box destined for the incinerator. To make matters worse, that shrinking market is also...
...maybe not. For now, rumors of the casket's death are somewhat exaggerated. The normally stiff industry is offering consumers a wider range of options, from customized doodads to cheaper models to online window shopping. With families still paying $2,000 to $2,500 on average for a casket--a third of the average bill for the total funeral, which the National Funeral Directors Association says was $6,500 in 2004--there's still plenty of money in building boxes for burial...
Batesville is counting on that. Founded in 1884, Batesville Casket Co.--named for its hometown in Indiana--adopted Toyota's vaunted manufacturing techniques in the 1990s to improve quality, speed delivery and reduce costs. Today the unit of $1.3 billion Hillenbrand Industries (which also makes medical equipment) says it completes one casket every 53 seconds and delivers it usually within 48 hours. Batesville offers 600 casket designs in 150 color combinations and 30 shapes. Although it owns 45% of the market, even the casket leader can no longer take that position for granted. Time was, funeral directors flocked to Indiana...
...consumer, the problem with buying a casket is that nobody wants to do so until the need arises--and by then it's simplest to purchase one through the funeral home. Consumer watchdogs say some funeral homes regularly inflate prices on caskets and mislead families into believing they may not shop elsewhere, despite a 1984 ruling by the Federal Trade Commission that explicitly states they may. (A class action was filed in 2005 by the Funeral Consumers Alliance that charged Batesville with conspiring with the big funeral-service chains. Batesville will not comment on pending litigation...