Trends: Opening the Box

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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 to tour its factories. Today the company must also rely on its touring trailer and lavish exhibits at funeral conventions to solicit business.

For the 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.)

A growing number of entrepreneurs--end-trepreneurs?--are shaking up that model by going directly to consumers. Costco introduced caskets in 2004. Competitive Caskets, a small store in Clifton, N.J., solicits passersby with a bright green awning: 50%--70% OFF; FUNERAL HOMES MUST ACCEPT OUR CASKETS. Bob and Jenny Boots of Eagle Custom Caskets have found their motorcycle-loving niche online. Ernie Wolfe, an art-gallery owner in Los Angeles, markets his Ghanaian-made caskets as art.

While an RIP is premature for the industry, what's clear is this: casketmakers, like the rest of the funeral business, ought not rest easy. The coming generation of choosy, cheap, fat, loudmouthed American consumers never will.

Adapted, with permission, from Remember Me: A Lively Tour of the New American Way of Death (Collins). By Lisa Takeuchi Cullen