funeral directors to aggressively market the high-end units. They devised ingenious marketing tools and materials for funeral home owners, to demonstrate the durability of high-end caskets to customers.
Stainless-steel caskets, the next step upward, indicate quality, and the eye appeal often more than justifies the price increase. Stainless-steel caskets were touted as the obvious choice of material to wise housewives back in the day—they knew that the same stainless steel was used to make long-lasting knives, forks, and spoons in the kitchen at home. A framed advertising featuring a beautiful apron-clad homemaker was placed in stainless-steel caskets to appeal to women venturing into the casket-selection room. The beautiful homemaker was shown holding a wooden, velvet-lined utensil case to demonstrate that stainless steel was the ultimate material for durability.
Copper and bronze caskets, the most expensive and most profitable sales for funeral homes, have received a great deal more marketing attention than stainless-steel ones. Copper and bronze do not rust. Casket companies emphasize that point in their promotional materials in hopes that intelligent and progressive funeral directors will impart such information to families and push on them the belief that the body contained therein would be unaffected. Casket companies used to provide funeral directors with small copper and bronze samples to display inside caskets so that consumers could touch them and imagine how genuinely protected their deceased loved ones would be. The Statue of Liberty, constructed of copper, was a popular lithograph displayed in caskets to tout copper’s durability, as were photos of copper gutters on expensive homes.
Casket companies also advise funeral directors to strategically position an expensive unit right inside the selection-room door. Casket makers recommend that the first casket the consumer notice be a copper or bronze model, because 75 percent of the time, men select the first casket they see. It’s assumed that men do this because they like to seem decisive and in control. In reality, though, I think that men walk into the selection room and point to the first casket that catches their eye just so they can get out of the room. Women, however, tend to shop for caskets with a greater degree of deliberation: they compare prices, feel the interior material, ask questions, even lay the burial garments of the deceased inside a casket to make sure the color combination is just right. Mom’s periwinkle suit must pick up the navy of the casket’s interior; Dad’s camel sports coat must match the tan pillow. Yet it’s still a man’s world at the funeral home; the majority of male-headed households leave the casket choice to the man of the house.
A solid copper casket has been the holy grail sale for funeral directors since the 1950s. I recall as a fifteen- year-old hearing tales of that elusive but finally consummated copper sale. The successful funeral director would be beside himself with pride, relating to his wide-eyed peers just how he’d accomplished his feat: “They were looking real hard at the eighteen-gauge bronze tone, but then they turned around and told me they liked the copper, because it would never rust!”
My supervisor many years ago was a classy, white-haired gentleman, a sharp dresser, and a genuinely nice person. He sold more copper caskets in a single year than anyone I have ever known, and when he did, he would announce, “I sold a copper—again.” That pause before
The same supervisor, held in such awesome esteem by his employees, had a habit of making us feel uncomfortable when we did accomplish a respectable copper-or-better sale. He was rightly concerned about where the payment was coming from, particularly with a high-end product. On many occasions, I had to explain in detail exactly who would pay the bill; whether insurance proceeds were involved; and most important, how soon he could expect the payment. It was always satisfying when I was able to stroll into his office; report the good news of a high-end casket sale; and hand him the signed contract, complete with an envelope full of cash stapled to it—in other words, a paid-in-full account. My coworkers were sometimes envious of my ability to convince families to pay by the day of the service; however, in most cases, I was merely lucky that I had met people wishing to get it all over with.
Caskets made of solid bronze are the costliest and probably the most impressive looking of all. Bronze sales are rare, though, and when they do occur, most funeral directors are beside themselves with glee. Obviously, as the wholesale cost increases, so does the retail markup and profit margin. Entry-level bronze caskets retail for nearly $5,000 for a low-end and up to $9,000 for a high-end. A gold-plated, solid bronze casket that wholesales for $17,000 sells in some markets for $34,000.
Whenever I travel, I make a point to secure a general price list and a casket price list from a funeral home or two. During a recent trip to Los Angeles, I discovered that one home was charging three times wholesale as common practice. I realize the cost of living is higher there than in Ohio, but that markup was ridiculous.
When I first began my career in the funeral business, solid bronzes were referred to as gangster caskets. From reading about the Mafia and seeing the mobster movies of the day, I learned that a great send-off seemed to be part of their public image. One of the first embalming-fluid salesmen I met was based in Chicago. I always looked forward to his calls because of his spellbinding tales regarding his father’s funeral home on the South Side of Chicago in the late 1920s and early 1930s. The father had been approached by a ranking mobster and informed that his business had become the local syndicate’s funeral home of choice. When he was handed $10,000 in cash to seal the relationship, the gentleman realized the seriousness of the situation and that he had better play ball.
His first job for the Chicago Mob was to place a bullet-riddled body beneath the bed of a casket already occupied by a recently deceased person. The funeral took place with two occupants, one hidden in the same casket. This act was repeated several times over the years, with a few complaints from pallbearers about the heavy weight they were carrying.
When the practice became too risky, the Mafia partners supposedly equipped his establishment with the South Side’s first crematorium. To cremate an enemy and obliterate the body, as my acquaintance described, indicated a total lack of respect. Cremating dispatched enemies was so much easier, with far less evidence left behind, so a whole new cottage industry developed. The funeral director was said to still receive his standard fee for services rendered.
I once drove to a funeral home in Kentucky to bring back an accident victim and I received the grand tour of the small town’s establishment. The owner proudly showed me several framed awards proclaiming his funeral home as the top seller of copper and bronze caskets for many years in a row. His casket supplier was no doubt equally excited. What I found most intriguing was that every casket in his display room was either solid copper or solid bronze! No wonder he sold so many. I asked him what happened when a family of modest means came to him for service. He responded that everyone in his area knew that when they patronized him, they had better bring along plenty of money.
The average retail bronze casket is priced at $8,500, so it is not a very common purchase. The few times, perhaps twice a year, that I sell a solid bronze, it is almost an unbelievable experience. That is, I am always puzzled when a customer purchases such an expensive casket. I suppose it is my college sociology taking over, but I want to uncover the reasoning behind spending that much money for an item that you will enjoy for basically a few hours. Is it a guilt trip? Is it to impress the expected mourners? Is it assumed that it is the last thing you can buy for the deceased loved one? Is it the theory that since the cost is so high, it must be the best that money can buy? Does it make you a better son if you buy your deceased mother a solid bronze casket? All of that plays in my mind in the case of such a purchase.
In my experience most bronze sales are not to the ultra-rich but to the middle class. The first time I ever sold a solid bronze was to a retired General Motors factory worker who had saved money over the years specifically for his wife’s burial. He didn’t trust life insurance salespeople and even opted not to accept the insurance GM offered. Still, he told me he wanted the most expensive casket for his spouse, and he didn’t care what it cost. Most funeral homes today have a dedicated room on the premises devoted exclusively to the presentation of caskets, burial vault models, and perhaps cremation urns. The showroom or selection room, with an average of fifteen to twenty units, has always been, and hopefully will remain, a place where the thought of profits dance like sugarplums in the funeral director’s head.
Many years ago, I met a funeral director who operated his business in my hometown back in the 1940s. As we discussed our common vocation, he offered for my perusal a brochure he handed out to potential customers back in his day. It was the last brochure he had, so I couldn’t keep it, but it described his funeral home as equipped with “ice cold conditioned air,” “two reposing parlors,” and “a goodly supply of the latest metal caskets.” I asked the old gentleman what exactly constituted a “goodly supply” and he replied, “Seven.”
I attended a family funeral in Tennessee a few years ago, and of course the funeral home owner and I
