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Justin Crowe: How You Can Turn Your Loved One's Ashes Into Stones
25 Plays4 years ago
What if you could turn your loved one’s ashes into stones? Well, today’s episode on the Glam Reaper Podcast features that interesting idea turned into reality.
Meet Justin Crowe, founder and CEO of Parting Stone. In this episode, Justin chats with host Jennifer about an incredibly unique technology they’ve developed at Parting Stone to offer families an alternative to cremated remains. Instead of receiving a bag of ashes, families have the option to receive a collection of solids that look very much like stones.
Parting Stone is the only company in the world that offers alternatives to cremated remains, not only for human remains but also for our beloved pets! Tune in to this episode to learn how Parting Stone started and how they turn cremated remains into a unique piece of rock that you can actually hold.
LITTLE NUGGETS OF GOLD:
- Justin’s story and how he first got his inspiration for Parting Stone
- Interesting things about the natural outcome of the stones
- The process of solidifying cremated remains
- Parting Stone during the pandemic
Connect with Justin Crowe:
Website: https://partingstone.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/partingstone/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/partingstone
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/partingstone
Connect with Jennifer/The Glam Reaper:
Facebook Page - Muldowney Memorials: https://www.facebook.com/MuldowneyMemorials/
Facebook Page - Rainbow Bridge Memorials: https://www.facebook.com/rainbowbridgememorialsdotcom
Instagram - @muldowneymemorials & @jennifermuldowney
Twitter - @TheGlamReaper
Email us here: glamreaperpodcast@gmail.com
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Transcript
Introduction to Justin and Parting Stone
00:00:05
Speaker
Hi and welcome to another episode of the Glam Reaper podcast.
00:00:09
Speaker
On today's episode we have a pretty interesting guy.
00:00:14
Speaker
I met Justin a long time ago at the NFDA, which is the funeral directors convention and he told me about turning people into stones.
00:00:23
Speaker
So let's get into it.
00:00:25
Speaker
Welcome to the Glam Reaper podcast.
00:00:28
Speaker
Thank you so much.
00:00:30
Speaker
So I haven't seen you, Justin, in over a year, just over a year.
00:00:34
Speaker
We met at the NFDA in Chicago last year, 2019.
00:00:39
Speaker
And little did we know what was going to be ahead of us.
00:00:44
Speaker
Anyway, we shall move swiftly along because we don't need to harbor on about that.
00:00:48
Speaker
First of all, there's a lot of us, a lot we can talk about, Justin.
00:00:52
Speaker
But how I met you was we got introduced by the fabulous Larry Stewart, I believe, right?
00:00:57
Speaker
who will also be on this podcast tell us parting stone that is your company as some of my listeners know i do cremation jewelry which is ashes with glass and so i was fascinated that you have similarly aligned but different concept talk about that tell me we developed a technology to offer families an alternative
00:01:20
Speaker
to cremated remains.
00:01:22
Speaker
So instead of receiving a bag of ashes following the cremation, you can now receive a collection of solids that look very much like stones and feel like stones.
00:01:33
Speaker
The reason this happened is because when my grandfather died, I started to talk to people about their experience and I kept hearing the same story, which almost became, you know, kind of comical, which is that they would talk really passionately about
00:01:47
Speaker
these loved ones and then tell me they were keeping their remains in a closet, a basement or garage as ashes.
00:01:54
Speaker
That was about four years ago that I kind of that I had that experience.
00:01:58
Speaker
And I just thought, like, surely there's a better solution than this and kind of had this crazy idea at the time, which was could we offer an alternative to ashes?
The Process of Creating Stones from Ashes
00:02:07
Speaker
So that's kind of the beginning of how Parting Stone and Solidified Remains started.
00:02:11
Speaker
So, parting stone, because one of the things I like to do on this podcast is break it down.
00:02:17
Speaker
Because you and I, at Funeral Speak, most of the people I have on this podcast have some sort of a dalliance with the funeral community or industry or business, whatever way you want to refer to it.
00:02:29
Speaker
So, I try and sort of break it down.
00:02:31
Speaker
So, essentially, you take somebody's ashes, and it can be a pet or a human, correct?
00:02:35
Speaker
Correct.
00:02:39
Speaker
Yeah, because it's the same thing.
00:02:41
Speaker
That was one of the first things I used to get all the time is, oh my God, could you do it to my pet dog or could you do it to my grandmother?
00:02:48
Speaker
You know, depending on which conversation we'd had previous.
00:02:51
Speaker
And what people don't realize is they're similar remains.
00:02:55
Speaker
And so you take the ashes, the remains, and you like condense it.
00:03:01
Speaker
I mean, what's the...
00:03:03
Speaker
into a stone, like a lovely, beautiful, smooth stone, which interestingly, when I first began my journey to cremation jewellery,
00:03:11
Speaker
My dad loved what I did, but in classic, my dad told me that he wouldn't have anything to do with any of it.
00:03:20
Speaker
Reason being is because he's a textual person, so he likes to hold something to something.
00:03:26
Speaker
And so he, one of the first things he said to me was, Jen, you need to come up with some sort of like a rock or a thing for the guys.
00:03:33
Speaker
You know, he was, the jewelry was a great for the girls, but he needed something for the guys.
00:03:37
Speaker
And while we did come up with something, I wasn't,
00:03:40
Speaker
thrilled about it and I have to be 150% about any of our products.
00:03:43
Speaker
So to me, what I lack, you brought in, which is amazing.
00:03:47
Speaker
So now dad, you know, shout out to you.
00:03:49
Speaker
I have some great regards for when you go, even though actually that's him that wants it.
00:03:54
Speaker
But anyway, it's just so people understand it is a smooth, are they always white, the rocks?
Options for Families: Ashes or Stones?
00:04:01
Speaker
So what's kind of unique about Hardingstone and the service that we offer is we will solidify the whole amount of remains.
00:04:09
Speaker
into these solids.
00:04:10
Speaker
So it's really the first ever, we're actually the only company in the world offering an alternative to cremated remains, which is kind of cool.
00:04:17
Speaker
And the way this is sold is you walk into a funeral home, choose cremation, the funeral director says, we have two options for receiving the remains.
00:04:24
Speaker
Would you like to receive them back as cremated remains or solidified remains?
00:04:28
Speaker
And they show the family the two options and they choose what they want.
00:04:31
Speaker
So most of the families we work with will actually never see the ashes.
00:04:35
Speaker
They receive them in the solidified form.
00:04:38
Speaker
And then the colors to touch on the colors and the kind of, and then also your point on like the similarities or differences between animal cremated remains and human cremated remains.
00:04:49
Speaker
One of the most interesting things that we've discovered while developing this process is that solidified animal remains and solidified human remains are actually very different and humans will come out all of these different colors.
00:05:05
Speaker
Which is so
00:05:07
Speaker
Which is so interesting.
00:05:08
Speaker
We've seen like deep, like kind of jade greens.
00:05:13
Speaker
We've seen honey yellows, lavenders, like chocolate browns, honeys, like we've seen everything.
00:05:18
Speaker
It's so interesting.
00:05:21
Speaker
Does somebody get to choose that or that's just they get their human?
00:05:25
Speaker
It's just natural to each person.
00:05:28
Speaker
Right, okay.
00:05:29
Speaker
And when you said, because for our process, human and pet remains are similar, but you were saying they're very different.
00:05:36
Speaker
So while humans are a rainbow of colors, are the pets not for your process?
00:05:41
Speaker
Pets are generally just come out very white.
00:05:45
Speaker
There is some variation in pets as well, but not nearly the amount that we see in the humans.
00:05:50
Speaker
And also, I can talk a little bit about our process and how it works too, which I didn't touch on.
The Lab Process in Santa Fe
00:05:56
Speaker
So when a family chooses solidified remains, the funeral director will send the remains to our lab here in Santa Fe.
00:06:03
Speaker
And we have a really beautiful 3,000 square foot lab facility here.
00:06:07
Speaker
And the first step is to refine the kind of granular remains into a powder.
00:06:13
Speaker
And then we will add a small amount of binder to kind of turn them into a clay-like material.
00:06:19
Speaker
The solids are formed from there.
00:06:20
Speaker
And then they'll go back into a kiln, kind of like a ceramic kiln.
00:06:24
Speaker
heated hotter than the temperature of that original cremation.
00:06:28
Speaker
This is where the solidification happens.
00:06:30
Speaker
And when they come out of there, they go into essentially a rock polishing process.
00:06:34
Speaker
And the final material is a lot like a normal rock or a lot like ceramic.
00:06:39
Speaker
You know, it's not going to scratch with your fingernail.
00:06:41
Speaker
It's not going to dissolve in water.
00:06:43
Speaker
It's going to outlast us on this planet.
00:06:46
Speaker
I have another question I want to ask you about, but that actually brings me to when I remember when I met you, generally when I meet people, I say whatever is on my head.
00:06:56
Speaker
So I think I got super excited about yours, you know, the concept of yours, because for me, I felt that rather than ashes,
00:07:07
Speaker
you know, getting buried under a tree, like a lot of people think, and they think the tree absorbs them and all that sort of stuff.
00:07:13
Speaker
I loved the idea of yours sort of being the bedrock for a plant out in a garden, or I think I even said this to you at the time, my crazy brain, or to be in a fishbowl, you know, I mean, why not?
00:07:26
Speaker
You know, they don't dissolve.
00:07:28
Speaker
So if granny loved her fish or if
00:07:33
Speaker
whatever.
00:07:34
Speaker
I just felt like the fact that you could use them with water, which is a beautiful feature in a home, very feng shui, which we are actually going to have a feng shui person on this podcast too.
00:07:43
Speaker
But, you know, very great, very great.
00:07:45
Speaker
That's not even the right phrase, but to have something that you can have that's pretty, that's water, that's not just, I don't want to sound, but that's not just dust in a urn.
00:07:58
Speaker
Because to be honest, I've never been a fan of any urn, really.
00:08:01
Speaker
I actually, I've seen one or two beautiful ones of the latter years, but up until recently, oh my god, they're just depressing looking.
00:08:10
Speaker
Well, they're tacky and outdated and I don't know, I feel the same way.
00:08:17
Speaker
And so it's interesting because I actually thought, honestly, your process was more similar to mine in that you take some of the ashes, but yours is actually a full on.
00:08:27
Speaker
So if somebody didn't want to get rid of all the ashes, they wanted just one or two rocks.
00:08:33
Speaker
How does that work?
00:08:34
Speaker
Do you call them rocks or stones?
00:08:37
Speaker
Well, I call them solidified remains, but they look like stones.
00:08:40
Speaker
Yeah.
00:08:41
Speaker
That's possible, like a keepsake amount.
00:08:44
Speaker
We really don't see ourselves as a keepsake company.
00:08:46
Speaker
We see ourselves as a human remains company and an animal remains company.
00:08:50
Speaker
But it's the same price for the process, essentially.
00:08:53
Speaker
So you can, the minimum amount we need is a couple tablespoons.
00:08:57
Speaker
And as long as we have that, we can make a couple of small solids.
00:09:00
Speaker
But generally, we'll receive the full amount of remains to our lab and process that full amount back to the family.
00:09:06
Speaker
So there's no ashes left.
00:09:07
Speaker
You know, what I found when I was going through my grandfather's death is that it was the material of ashes themselves that was really kind of forming this, I don't know, a lot of times like an emotional barrier.
00:09:19
Speaker
We didn't really know what to do with them.
00:09:22
Speaker
We didn't really want to learn.
00:09:23
Speaker
We didn't want to
00:09:24
Speaker
see them or touch them because they're messy.
00:09:27
Speaker
We were afraid of filling them.
00:09:28
Speaker
We didn't want to see the bone fragments.
00:09:30
Speaker
We were embarrassed to have them out when people came over.
00:09:33
Speaker
And it just seemed like we don't accept that type of poor experience for anything else in modern life.
00:09:39
Speaker
You know, there had to be another solution to this.
00:09:41
Speaker
And cremated remains are one of our most treasured possessions.
00:09:45
Speaker
I guess this is back to your color situation, because I was just thinking, you know, what if I'm somebody who's lost, you know, mom, dad,
00:09:54
Speaker
granny, granddad, brother, sister, and I have all of these solidified remains, stones, rocks.
00:10:00
Speaker
You know, what if they all get intermingled?
00:10:02
Speaker
Will I be able to tell them apart?
00:10:06
Speaker
Oh, interesting.
00:10:07
Speaker
We'll often have people solidify, like, two parents or even, like, pets and people, and it depends on how similar the material comes out.
00:10:17
Speaker
So the answer is maybe you can tell them apart.
00:10:20
Speaker
You can definitely keep them separated.
00:10:21
Speaker
We're actually looking into...
00:10:23
Speaker
If there's a way for us to engrave on them very small initials or something so we can tell them apart.
00:10:29
Speaker
We don't currently offer that, but that's a real situation.
00:10:32
Speaker
And I'm sure, to be honest, I'm sure anybody that's grieving out there is probably thinking to me, you know, what a crazy question that is.
00:10:41
Speaker
Of course, you know the difference.
00:10:42
Speaker
You know, it's like, you know, the difference between twins and anything like that.
00:10:46
Speaker
When it's that precious to you, you know the difference.
00:10:48
Speaker
It's not a, I'm being a little bit flippant with asking that question, but I'm just imagining all these rocks and sort of thinking, oh my God, you know, they're classically held in an urn in one spot.
00:10:59
Speaker
So now if you've got this bundle of rocks and stones, you know, what do you do with them then?
00:11:04
Speaker
The next thing I'd really love to know is obviously 2020, the year of crazy, but we've had, as you and I talked about over a year ago,
00:11:13
Speaker
a lot of innovation in this industry.
00:11:15
Speaker
So you've got water cremation or bio cremation, so many words to it, different terms.
00:11:20
Speaker
You've got all of these different methods of body disposition that are coming out and more to come, I have no doubt.
00:11:28
Speaker
And I'm excited for some, not so excited for others.
00:11:31
Speaker
Have you tried to test your product in relation to them?
00:11:34
Speaker
Are you sticking with cremation for now?
00:11:36
Speaker
Are you open to it?
00:11:38
Speaker
What's your thoughts on that?
Emerging Body Disposition Methods
00:11:40
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, we're kind of in this
00:11:44
Speaker
funny golden age of funeral innovation, you know, which is just so interesting and really fun to be a part of.
00:11:50
Speaker
I think it's about time, to be honest.
00:11:52
Speaker
But yeah, we've seen the alkaline hydrolysis and the open air cremations and the organic body reduction.
00:11:59
Speaker
Really interesting.
00:12:00
Speaker
We definitely, I mean, Parting Stone, we see ourselves definitely in line with that movement.
00:12:06
Speaker
I mean, what all of this is doing and the reason it's happening is people got tired of having
00:12:12
Speaker
you know, two options or very few options.
00:12:15
Speaker
The reason these are working is because the public has been asking for it and because the public is supporting it.
00:12:22
Speaker
We have a tendency in the United States to push the topic of death under a rug and like not talk about it.
00:12:30
Speaker
Right.
00:12:31
Speaker
Honestly, I think all the new technologies, what's been holding them back is maybe people's discomforts.
00:12:37
Speaker
But we're getting to this point where people are genuinely excited about organic body reduction and genuinely excited about alkaline hydrolysis because it's better for the environment and natural burial.
00:12:49
Speaker
And I think that in itself is really exciting.
00:12:51
Speaker
And that's really why we started this as well to empower families in their grief through a form of remains they can touch and hold and feel close with.
00:12:59
Speaker
And so I definitely think we're in line with that whole movement
00:13:03
Speaker
In terms of solidifying remains from alkaline hydrolysis, we have proven that we can do it and we have done it for a few customers at this point.
00:13:13
Speaker
We don't publicly offer it yet.
00:13:14
Speaker
We want to do some more research into it, but we expect to be offering it in the next six months to a year.
00:13:20
Speaker
And that's alkaline hydrolysis?
00:13:22
Speaker
Correct.
00:13:23
Speaker
Okay.
00:13:25
Speaker
And so it would be something that if there is any up and coming tech companies or startups out there that are interested in maybe partnering with you or seeing if their product works, that maybe as part of their process, they could send you a sample and that way you guys could figure out whether it works.
00:13:42
Speaker
And that would move everything along a lot quicker, I guess, for the end consumer, which is what it's all about, really, for everybody in the funeral community.
00:13:51
Speaker
Or it should be, should I say.
00:13:52
Speaker
Yeah.
00:13:53
Speaker
Not always.
00:13:54
Speaker
That's amazing.
00:13:55
Speaker
Well, well done.
00:13:56
Speaker
And how's it going?
00:13:57
Speaker
I mean, in the last year, how has it been for you?
00:14:00
Speaker
I mean, COVID obviously has probably put a bit of dampener on it, or maybe it's increased.
00:14:04
Speaker
It seems to go either way for the first year.
00:14:08
Speaker
I mean, well, it's so interesting.
00:14:10
Speaker
You know, we've been now, we started in October 2019, and we have now been functioning as a company more
00:14:19
Speaker
in a pandemic than not in a pandemic,
Impact of the Pandemic on Parting Stone
00:14:22
Speaker
right?
00:14:22
Speaker
Someone's like, well, what's normal life like in the business?
00:14:26
Speaker
And I'm like, we don't actually know.
00:14:28
Speaker
Like, we have no idea what it is to run a business not in a recession, in a pandemic.
00:14:33
Speaker
How it's affecting us, I'm not totally, we're not totally sure.
00:14:36
Speaker
But, you know, in March, it's been a kind of a roller coaster for us.
00:14:40
Speaker
And we were just, we were getting some really great traction at the beginning of the year.
00:14:45
Speaker
March hit and COVID became a thing.
00:14:49
Speaker
and people started, you know, everyone was not was really unsure of what the future looked like and what the pandemic was going to be.
00:14:56
Speaker
And there was that two weeks where like the whole kind of world stopped in a lot of ways.
00:15:01
Speaker
And like nobody's buying anything.
00:15:02
Speaker
Nobody's going out.
00:15:03
Speaker
Nobody's doing anything.
00:15:04
Speaker
And our sales, like we were not doing well.
00:15:07
Speaker
And, you know, as a startup company, when your cash flow stops, like it was a really scary time, you know, not only in our everyone's personal life and health and
00:15:18
Speaker
emotional but also from a business standpoint like will we you know be how long can we sustain this and the answer at that time was not very long and really what we did at that time is we found that so after those two weeks our sales had picked up again but not totally back to where they were we actually found that funeral directors had a lot more time on their hands
00:15:41
Speaker
because of the stay at home orders, there was no services, there was no, and because of that, there was no embalming, there were no caskets, there were no viewings, there were no events.
00:15:50
Speaker
And so, although, you know, in a lot of urban areas, there were more deaths happening in some of these more suburban rural areas, there was actually a lot of time on a lot of their hands.
00:16:00
Speaker
So we doubled down on training more people to offer solidified remains as an option.
00:16:05
Speaker
And by the time the stay at home orders were lifted in June, we had actually doubled our sales
00:16:11
Speaker
You know, that week, you know, it was like two weeks that everyone kind of lifted and our sales just like skyrocketed, which was a really great sign because we were kind of blindly going into this.
00:16:22
Speaker
We were like, okay, like we think this is what's happening.
00:16:25
Speaker
Let's go for it.
00:16:26
Speaker
And it paid off, which is really nice.
00:16:29
Speaker
And now what we're seeing is an expanded cremation market.
00:16:33
Speaker
More people are choosing cremation.
00:16:34
Speaker
And we've received a few letters from families that we've worked with.
00:16:39
Speaker
that essentially have said, because of COVID, I wasn't able to see my mother in the last few weeks of her life.
00:16:46
Speaker
Thank you for providing an option for remains that allowed me to feel close with her, which is really sweet.
00:16:51
Speaker
And I feel really grateful that we can provide that type of experience for people.
00:16:57
Speaker
But it really kind of speaks to what everyone's going through right now.
00:17:01
Speaker
We've served multiple people who died of COVID-19, and we've talked to those families.
00:17:07
Speaker
We got one letter from a family that said my, well, yeah, it's the same one.
00:17:11
Speaker
It was that she wasn't able to see her mother.
00:17:14
Speaker
Tough time.
00:17:15
Speaker
I mean, being based in New York and being a memorial planner, it's been a very interesting year for me, I will say.
00:17:23
Speaker
I mean, I've gone to streaming.
00:17:25
Speaker
It's gone from 500, having in-person 500 events and memorials to streaming it to hundreds.
00:17:32
Speaker
I mean, it's just crazy.
00:17:33
Speaker
It really is.
00:17:34
Speaker
And whether it'll bounce back or what way it'll bounce back, I think will be very interesting for the next year.
00:17:39
Speaker
I do think 2021 is going to be a very, very interesting year for memorials.
00:17:44
Speaker
A lot of people will, whether it's with the remains, with an urn, with the solidified remains or whatever they have of their loan.
00:17:54
Speaker
I think they'll have some sort of services.
00:17:55
Speaker
And I hope they do.
00:17:57
Speaker
And not just from a, you know, to keep me busy point of view, but I hope they do because I really do think there is validity in the
00:18:05
Speaker
the funeral and in the memorial service as a blueprint, should I say, for grief.
00:18:11
Speaker
And it's sad to watch families not have that.
00:18:14
Speaker
You know, we're still doing smaller ones here, but it's few and far between.
00:18:19
Speaker
And, you know, they have 20 people at the service, but they want to have 200.
00:18:22
Speaker
Yeah.
00:18:24
Speaker
So it's just, you know, it's rough.
00:18:27
Speaker
Another question for you.
00:18:29
Speaker
Do you, are you just B2B?
00:18:31
Speaker
Do you do B2C?
00:18:32
Speaker
So are you just seeking out sort of veterinarians and funeral homes?
00:18:37
Speaker
Or can Joe Bloggs off the street come onto your website?
Expanding Partnerships with Funeral Homes
00:18:41
Speaker
And we'll leave all your information in the links below.
00:18:44
Speaker
But just for people who are listening, which will be funeral directors and Joe Bloggs, as I call them.
00:18:50
Speaker
Yeah, so we offer both B2B and B2C.
00:18:53
Speaker
Our almost entire focus is on the funeral industry right now.
00:18:58
Speaker
We don't really even focus on the pet industry, to be honest, although we do have a number of veterinarians who offer this.
00:19:05
Speaker
And if you are living with remains right now that you'd like turned into stones, you are welcome to go to our website.
00:19:12
Speaker
and you can start the process there.
00:19:13
Speaker
We'll send out a collection kit to retrieve those remains and get them shipped safely to our lab here in Santa Fe.
00:19:19
Speaker
But really our focus right now is with funeral homes and we're looking for more funeral home partners every day.
00:19:24
Speaker
And in the last year we've onboarded 200 in the United States and Canada, which has been so cool to see the industry have such a positive response to this and then actually see sales.
00:19:36
Speaker
And that's the reason we're growing is because
00:19:38
Speaker
the funeral homes will come on and be kind of skeptical and then families will start choosing this form of remains and they tell their friends and so that's really how we've grown over the last year.
00:19:50
Speaker
Now can I ask, won't sort of include all of these bits that I'll ask you, because I know I introduced your stuff, what you do to the funeral home that I work in.
00:20:03
Speaker
Did you hear anything from SEI?
00:20:05
Speaker
Are you with any SEI?
00:20:07
Speaker
Yeah, we're with a number of FCI funeral homes.
00:20:09
Speaker
They are doing really well with us.
00:20:11
Speaker
A lot of them in the kind of Western United States.
00:20:14
Speaker
So we've rolled out on an individual level with FCI funeral homes.
00:20:18
Speaker
We have not rolled out on a corporate level.
00:20:21
Speaker
We've definitely had conversations with corporate and yeah, we're seeing if it's a good fit for both of us for the future.
00:20:27
Speaker
Because I know, you know, once you're in with them and your paperwork and everything has gone through, you're pretty much, it's easier for you to go from one to the next funeral home.
00:20:36
Speaker
Yeah.
00:20:37
Speaker
Once they have all your paperwork and the pirates that be have all the paperwork and stuff like that.
00:20:42
Speaker
I remember the barrier with, are you still, what funeral home are you with right now?
00:20:49
Speaker
Campbell's.
00:20:49
Speaker
Frankie Campbell's.
00:20:50
Speaker
Okay.
00:20:50
Speaker
Frankie Campbell.
00:20:51
Speaker
The legendary Frankie Campbell.
00:20:53
Speaker
Is that where you're broadcasting from?
00:20:55
Speaker
That's where I'm broadcasting from today.
00:20:56
Speaker
Wow, very cool.
00:20:58
Speaker
I'm going to be like, oh, today is Frankie Campbell's.
00:21:01
Speaker
Yeah, and we would love to work with Frankie Campbell.
00:21:05
Speaker
You know, there's so many different types of funeral businesses.
00:21:11
Speaker
The two big sides of it are essentially like Frankie Campbell, which is like the premier, very high end, very high level of service on one end, and then the other end is
00:21:22
Speaker
direct cremation and essentially the business model is high volume cremation at the lowest price possible.
00:21:29
Speaker
And what's that?
00:21:33
Speaker
Yeah, totally.
00:21:34
Speaker
And, you know, and that's some people want that.
00:21:37
Speaker
And it's been interesting to enter this industry with this alternative to ashes and kind of fitting into kind of both business models and see where, see where we, how we can do that.
00:21:49
Speaker
And,
00:21:50
Speaker
We've found a path in both directions, which is cool.
00:21:52
Speaker
I have some new ideas for how it might work.
00:21:56
Speaker
We all have to help each other in this business.
00:21:57
Speaker
There's, especially all of us, new entrants into it.
00:22:01
Speaker
It's not as easy as it looks.
00:22:03
Speaker
I know I mentioned to you a goldfish bowl and potentially a
00:22:07
Speaker
rocks and stones in my garden.
00:22:10
Speaker
And that was just where my little brain went, the conversation we were having when I was holding the stone in my hand.
00:22:15
Speaker
But tell me what's your experiences or what's your feedback from your clients and your customers on what they're doing with the stones or how they're interacting with them or just to give our customers or our listeners here an idea themselves.
New Rituals with Memorial Stones
00:22:30
Speaker
So it's been really interesting seeing how living with a solid form of remains has kind of changed
00:22:37
Speaker
people's relationship with remains.
00:22:39
Speaker
And, you know, the biggest thing is they're not ending up in closets anymore, which is a big win, I think.
00:22:44
Speaker
I think one of the stories, so as an example that comes to mind, is a family wrote to us and told us about a remains reveal party that they held at their home.
00:22:54
Speaker
And so they got the box of solidified remains back.
00:22:57
Speaker
They invited the family over.
00:22:59
Speaker
They all poured champagne and they opened the box for the first time together.
00:23:02
Speaker
And just
00:23:04
Speaker
to see the color and the texture for the first time.
00:23:06
Speaker
And they all pass them around the kitchen table and everyone got to find the ones they like best and take them home.
00:23:13
Speaker
And, you know, that's not an interaction that you could have with with the ash form.
00:23:18
Speaker
And and we're finding that families are there's a lot of new rituals being dreamed up, I guess.
00:23:24
Speaker
People traveling and leaving leaving them in special places, people mailing them all over the country.
00:23:31
Speaker
It's been really cool to see the new ways that people are interacting with the remains.
00:23:36
Speaker
A quick question actually that just came out of that.
00:23:38
Speaker
Do the family get to choose how many stones they get or how does that work?
00:23:42
Speaker
It's a full amount of remains, so it's kind of just whatever comes out of the process.
00:23:45
Speaker
It's kind of a lot like cremation, you know, you get whatever volume goes in comes out.
00:23:51
Speaker
For instance, if we receive 10 cups of cremated remains, we'll return 10 cups of solidified remains to that family.
00:23:58
Speaker
Really, it's just the same material condensed into these solids.
00:24:02
Speaker
And what's the average, 10 to 14?
00:24:05
Speaker
The average for a person is probably 40 to 60, ranging from palm size down to kind of thumbnail size.
00:24:15
Speaker
But, you know, we did a similar thing.
00:24:16
Speaker
We shared them with everyone in the family who was around the country.
00:24:20
Speaker
We weren't able to gather.
00:24:21
Speaker
We had a Zoom memorial at the cemetery and they buried some of the stones.
00:24:27
Speaker
And yeah, it's, you know, death in the era of COVID.
00:24:32
Speaker
Yeah, right.
00:24:33
Speaker
And the stones, can they be easily mailed?
00:24:36
Speaker
How does that work?
00:24:37
Speaker
Do you have to identify them as remains or is it sort of a... You do, yep.
00:24:42
Speaker
When we introduced this new form of remains, USPS actually changed their rules to include it.
00:24:48
Speaker
And so you do have to identify it and label it.
00:24:53
Speaker
That was a fun time.
00:24:55
Speaker
I said, that sounds like it was a fun time.
00:24:57
Speaker
I'm gathering that that wasn't it.
00:24:58
Speaker
I'm like, congratulations.
00:25:02
Speaker
Yeah.
00:25:02
Speaker
Yeah.
00:25:03
Speaker
I mean, what's really one of, we have a lot of business challenges because, you know, because it's such a new technology.
00:25:11
Speaker
And one of them is that there's never been a company that regularly ships the full amount of remains.
00:25:20
Speaker
Yeah.
00:25:20
Speaker
You know, funeral homes will do it like once or twice a month usually, or if that,
00:25:25
Speaker
But we're shipping out, you know, a hundred remains a month right now.
00:25:31
Speaker
And the USPS pricing structure for that is challenging for us.
00:25:36
Speaker
And so, you know, we were hoping that to get it kind of reclassified, but we haven't had any luck so far with that.
00:25:45
Speaker
Well, I find the USPS...
00:25:48
Speaker
I mean a bit like banks, to be honest, in Ireland and here are the bane of my existence.
00:25:54
Speaker
I feel like every time I go in there,
00:25:56
Speaker
Not that I take Xanax, but I feel like that's something I would need afterwards.
00:26:00
Speaker
Like, I just feel like I never, there was one, this is a total sidestep, but I wanted to send my best friend back home in Ireland a birthday present home.
00:26:09
Speaker
I went in with the product and I handed it to the post office lady and I said, can you weigh that so I have an idea?
00:26:16
Speaker
Because it can literally be $10 up to 70, right?
00:26:20
Speaker
To me, it's just bonkers how they do it.
00:26:22
Speaker
And I think she said it was...
00:26:26
Speaker
$15 so I brought it home and I thought the product itself was only $21 I think so I thought $15 to send it home am I crazy but I thought you know what it'd be nice it's a nice treat send it home so I packaged it up now when I say packaged it up I put it in an envelope couldn't have weighed more than a pen right I put it in the
00:26:48
Speaker
back in an envelope and I did my paperwork and this was why I wanted to do all the paperwork at home because I hate post offices and I hate being in them and when they ask me to do paperwork and then they don't have pens.
00:26:57
Speaker
They never have pens.
00:26:59
Speaker
Brought it back and thought, right, great.
00:27:00
Speaker
I've done everything.
00:27:01
Speaker
I've done my due diligence.
00:27:02
Speaker
I will be in and out.
00:27:03
Speaker
I go up, hand it to her.
00:27:04
Speaker
She's like $35.
00:27:06
Speaker
How did it increase in $20 by putting it in an envelope?
00:27:11
Speaker
How?
00:27:12
Speaker
I took it.
00:27:13
Speaker
I said, give that back to me.
00:27:14
Speaker
It's fine.
00:27:14
Speaker
And my best friend actually laughed because she said, it's fine.
00:27:19
Speaker
I'd rather you brought that $20 or now $35.
00:27:22
Speaker
She said, home and we have a few drinks when you get here.
00:27:26
Speaker
But I was just livid.
00:27:27
Speaker
And I should have really posted it because of the thought.
00:27:30
Speaker
But I was just so enraged.
00:27:32
Speaker
And of course, there's no other option.
00:27:34
Speaker
I mean, UPS and...
00:27:36
Speaker
But there's not like that's the frustrating thing actually about the postal system is you don't actually have a massive amount of options.
00:27:44
Speaker
Right.
00:27:44
Speaker
And in the US, there's one option.
00:27:47
Speaker
Right.
00:27:47
Speaker
It's just the only way to ship cremated remains, animal or human, is USPS Priority Mail Express.
00:27:54
Speaker
It used to be registered mail.
00:27:56
Speaker
Did you know that?
00:27:57
Speaker
Do you remember this?
00:27:59
Speaker
It used to be it used to be registered mail.
00:28:01
Speaker
And then the Postal Service lost a congressman's remains.
00:28:08
Speaker
And then they shifted it to Priority Mail Express.
00:28:11
Speaker
And I get it.
00:28:13
Speaker
It is.
00:28:14
Speaker
And look, you run the risk every day.
00:28:18
Speaker
It's not an easy thing to ask any company to do, I guess.
00:28:21
Speaker
But part of me is like, if you could set up a funeral-only postal service and have that be the people, you know, I don't know.
00:28:29
Speaker
Yeah, yeah.
00:28:30
Speaker
Or, you know.
00:28:34
Speaker
Yeah.
00:28:35
Speaker
And what we'd like to do is just insure.
00:28:37
Speaker
It's an insurance question really for the folks because the remains don't have a set value.
00:28:43
Speaker
And so USPS won't touch them and FedEx won't touch them.
00:28:47
Speaker
But USPS will.
00:28:49
Speaker
But what we'd really like to do is just we'd like to provide the insurance ourselves and work with one of these other companies at some point.
00:28:56
Speaker
And I think as we grow and as we start to shift hundreds or thousands a month that hopefully we can
00:29:03
Speaker
we can work with another carrier.
00:29:07
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely.
Shipping Challenges and Future Disposition Methods
00:29:08
Speaker
And I think the more options that are going to become available for people as well, I mean, you've got Christina Spade with her composting in Washington.
00:29:18
Speaker
I don't know if she's going to be shipping or if people would want them shipped.
00:29:21
Speaker
I mean, they may do after the 30 days or
00:29:24
Speaker
I'm actually I want to get her onto the podcast to discuss it in more detail but after the 30 day once the body's finished decomposing the families might not be in that state and so they may want them shipped I would imagine or who knows you know what but I'm sure the option should be there and so she's another person who it's not her remains it's right compost remains I guess I mean if she was to drop that and as you
00:29:51
Speaker
Priority Express it'd be like a $700 shipment or something yeah well thank you so much Justin for regaling us with all your stories Parting Stone is the company and we will leave all the information for all our listeners to check out and if you have somebody
00:30:10
Speaker
at home sitting in a wardrobe or on a shelf that you would maybe like to talk to Justin about I'm sure he'd be happy to answer some questions to people if they want to shoot you an email and just have any of their worries put aside so yeah thank you yeah absolutely thank you so much Jennifer
00:30:28
Speaker
That was a really interesting episode.
00:30:30
Speaker
Would you get turned into a stone?
00:30:32
Speaker
Would you want your loved ones turned into a stone?
00:30:34
Speaker
I kind of like the idea of being in a goldfish bowl, but I'm a little obsessed with water, so what do you think?