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Several retail categories have received the direct-to-consumer treatment in recent years—mattresses, eyewear, meal prep and feminine care, to name a few. Now, it’s the death industry that is getting reinvented as younger generations break with traditional funeral practices in favor of a more modern, transparent and often digital experience. In recent years, a host of startup brands specializing in cremation, caskets and funeral services have popped up with compelling propositions for consumers.

“For the past century, the death care industry has remained relatively unchanged,” said Victoria Haneman, a professor at Creighton University School of Law who studies innovative death business approaches, noting that the business was ripe for disruption. “We started to see a shift in attitudes about death and this notion of a positive death around 2010 with the baby boomer generation that was starting to think about meeting death on their own terms.”

Startups are also appealing to digitally-native millennials and Gen Z, she added, a cohort “that probably wants to meet death for their loved ones down a technologically mediated path because that’s how they live much of their life.”

Such changing consumer behavior is helping to grow Solace, a 3-year-old cremation company based in Portland, Oregon. Founded by Keith Crawford and David Odusanya, two former Nike brand executives, Solace is on its way to building the first national cremation brand. Here’s how.

How it started

After leaving Nike five years ago to set up their own creative shop, Crawford and Odusanya were in search of a game-changing business idea. Both had recently lost loved ones and were dismayed at the funeral process. Crawford said his experience was “old-fashioned, predatory in some fashion and very outdated” in addition to being gloomy and overwhelming. They realized the industry was ripe for innovation, particularly regarding cremation and making the event easier for families to take care of those who have died.

“We quickly realized this shift toward cremation from burial means the idea of a traditional brick-and-mortar funeral home doesn’t make sense,” said Crawford, noting that Solace is “simplifying and modernizing the whole experience from beginning to end,” particularly by bringing technology into the direct-to-consumer equation.

Crawford and Odusanya also realized the lack of national brands in the category opened the door for a business opportunity. 

“We went from sneakers to death,” said Odusanya, who noted that their work experience at Nike allowed them to fashion a new business that puts branding at its center. Odusanya was VP of design at Nike and is now chief creative officer at Solace while Crawford was VP of design at Nike’s Jordan brand and is now Solace’s CEO. 

Tipping point

Solace was founded in 2019, but it wasn’t until COVID-19 helped shift more consumer practices online that the business began to truly pick up speed. Customers can digitally arrange for and pay for the cremation of a body in a matter of minutes. They do not have to visit a brick-and-mortar funeral home or deal with the upselling often associated with the funeral business and its salespeople.

After starting with funding from friends and family, the company got a bigger boost last year by raising $1.75 million in a seed round.

“When COVID came and the idea of going into a physical business to do anything was pretty crazy, and people didn’t want to do it, it accelerated the relevance of our model, which is a virtual one,” said Crawford. Due to regulations, Solace can only grow state by state as it receives certification. The company currently operates in Oregon and California and recently launched in Florida as well. Each state requires going through a regulatory board to get licensed and hiring a separate team.

Solace, which is independently owned, now has nearly 20 full-time employees as well as several staffers on contract in its different markets. Representatives are also available via the phone as well as through Solace’s website. Since it launched, web site traffic has doubled year-over-year, according to the company.

Marketing strategies

A key part of Solace’s proposition is its cost transparency. The company charges $895 for its cremation services—a far cry from the $2,500 national average. In its marketing, the brand tries to make death and the death-care industry less morbid and more socially acceptable to talk about.  

“The cultural conversation about death and dying are not public—they’re still private and a little bit taboo,” said Debbie Carter, a marketing veteran who also worked at Nike and is now Solace’s chief marketing officer. “When the conversations are in the shadows, there’s no need to transform the industry.”

She’s been working to elevate the idea of end-of-life by incorporating it into Solace’s marketing. The company has a robust digital marketing strategy so Solace shows up when people are looking for cremation services online, but Solace is also building its brand awareness. Last year, the company began running a series of animated short films in which Carter, Crawford and Odusanya share stories about the loved ones they have lost. Called “Solace Cares,” the campaign has been airing on TV, as well as on the radio and digital channels, along with social media such as Facebook. Carter said Facebook has been beneficial in gaining data insights around consumer interaction with the ads. For example, on average, people are watching 29 of the 30 seconds of the “Solace Cares” spots, she said. 

“If you just talk about death, it’s hard to get into that but having a conversation about people, we found [consumers] can lean into that and hang on longer,” Carter said.

That insight helped inspire Solace’s next campaign, which will debut later this year. That push takes into account the fact that most people are not willing to plan for end-of-life, which leaves a lot of challenges for family members after someone dies. Solace created the "Solace Cares" campaign with Must Be Something, an agency run by former Wieden & Kennedy staffers. For its upcoming push, the brand worked with Red & Co., which was founded by Mira Kaddoura, another Wieden veteran. There, she first crossed paths with Carter, who was at Nike at the time.

What the experts say

Many experts say it’s time for innovation in the industry. Along with Solace and a similar cremation brand called Tulip, several startups have popped up around death care. Some allow consumers to make topsoil out of their remains, while others enable “creative disposition,” said Haneman. In the latter case, this means a body’s remains can be used to make a diamond or fireworks, or even be pressed into a vinyl record. Such businesses are gaining ground because religious practice is less of a factor than it once was, for example.

For Solace, Haneman said the challenge will be in bringing its product directly to consumers on a national scale when the system is designed for the state level and there are incentives for established operators to block disruption. She likened the issue to the obstacles faced by Uber and Lyft with the traditional taxi industry.

Solace has “done a very good job with getting their name out there in a way that is not going to be perceived negatively by a culture that has an existential fear of talking bout death,” she said. “Having a product that is direct-to-consumer with a national-level brand standing behind it with reliably disclosed pricing—all of these things will improve the industry across the board to the extent that it creates pressure against other operators to behave the same way.”

What’s next

In addition to its upcoming brand campaign, Solace is planning to expand its product offerings. One new category is urns, a result of numerous customer requests. Solace already includes a free urn made out of recyclable products as part of its offerings, but families have asked for more. That collection will launch at the end of this quarter, Odusanya said. After Florida, the company expects to grow its footprint into other states as it pursues its national ambitions.

“We want this to be more than cremation,” said Odusanya. “Cremation is essential and critical but we want to offer a range of services that makes not only the experience easier but enriching as well.”