What I Got Wrong About Funeral Directors

And it's not just selling you a casket

When I started Outside The Box Caskets, I actually wanted to sell direct to the public, that was my intention. It seemed obvious. Cut out the middleman, keep the cost down, give families a choice. I was one of those people who thought funeral directors were the barrier standing between a family and a fair price.

Years in, my thinking on this has completely changed, and I got it so wrong.

And a casket is such a small part of what they actually do. Funeral directors sit with families in the worst moment of their life, over and over, and somehow find something steady to say every single time. They work 24/7. A call out can come at any hour of the day or night, and they never know what they're walking into until they get there. They attend the most horrific scenes, and deal with people at their absolute worst.

They are the ones who have to deal with a body when it isn't in a good state, sometimes putting someone back together well enough that a family can still say goodbye to them, and then five minutes later they have to walk into a room and be calm, composed, and kind to that same family. For that family, it's the worst day of their life. For the funeral director, it's every day, with a different family each time, and they still show up steady for every single one. Nobody sees that part. They just see the invoice. On top of all of that, they've got overheads, staff, a business to run, exactly like I do, and none of that gets factored in when someone decides they're just marking up a coffin.

If a funeral director puts their name behind a casket and something goes wrong, that's not a bad review, that's their business and their reputation on the line, over something they had no part in choosing badly.

I've heard the stories. Cheap cardboard caskets that couldn't hold, a casket that started to sag, a funeral that had to be rushed into the ground because there was no other option left. For the sake of saving a couple of hundred dollars, it can be their business and their name that ends up in the news, over something that was never actually their fault. That risk sits with the funeral director, not with the person who saved a bit of money. So of course they're careful about what they'll put their name to.

Funerals can be expensive, but there are different ways to do them, and you can make it as simple or as involved as you want, it's all about what you choose. A funeral is also a once off. It has to happen, it's part of life. And saying goodbye to someone you love matters, that's a whole topic on its own, I'll get into that in another post.

Nobody dreams of planning their own funeral, and there's probably a reason why not many people actually do a DIY funeral. It is nothing like planning a wedding or a birthday party, it's not fun.

Funerals can be anything you want them to be. A funeral director will support you in whatever way you choose, whether that's doing the parts you want to do yourself and handing over the parts you don't, or the whole thing. There is no one size fits all, and funeral directors know that. They know their job is to support you in the roughest time of your life.

Here's the thing people don't always realise: I'm a designer, not a logistics company. Those are two completely different jobs, and trying to do both at once isn't realistic. Some of the components I design are nearly 3m long. Selling direct would mean warehousing stock, freighting caskets across the country, and running accounts with every funeral home myself. That's not designing anymore, that's running a freight business, and I don't know how to do that, and honestly, I don't want to.

So I stick to what I actually do well. I design the caskets, and I work with a distributor who already has the relationships, the warehousing and the logistics sorted, because that's their job, not mine. It took a long time for funeral directors to say yes to Outside The Box Caskets in the first place, because trust in this industry actually matters, and it's not something you can shortcut by trying to do everything yourself.

My view of this industry has shifted a lot since I started, and I think the public's view could stand to shift too. Give them more credit. They've earned every bit of it.

There's more to a funeral, and to the people who organise it, than most people realise. The people who support families through it are doing an important, special job, and I have a huge amount of respect for them. This is only part of what I've learned about what funeral directors actually do, and I hope it helps you see it the way I now do.

Outside The Box Caskets are available through funeral homes throughout New Zealand. Just ask for us by name.