Death Care Products & Services Industry Competitors

Forever Enterprises takes a long-term view of its business and its customers. Its Forever Cemeteries includes about half a dozen locations (including two Jewish) that are just as much nature park as final resting place, as some include exercise and nature trails....

Matthews International might not bury its competition, but it can supply the casket and bronze plate. The nation's #1 maker of cremation urns, bronze memorials (including Elvis Presley's Graceland marker), and commemorative products (Baseball Hall of Fame plaques), Matthews also builds mausoleums....

Alcor Life Extension Foundation is all about the future. The foundation, a provider of cryonics services, is the largest operation of its kind worldwide. Alcor has enlisted more than 840 members and has frozen some 80 people and animals in the first step to resuscitating them someday....

Oh, plant a tree to remember me. Perhaps that’s the idea behind Arbor Memorial Services, one of Canada’s leading providers of funeral, memorial, burial, and cremation services. The firm also sells caskets and other funeral products....

A pine box it is not. Batesville Casket, founded in 1884 is a leading maker of bronze, copper, stainless steel, steel, and hardwood caskets. It also makes urns and other memorial products for the cremation market. The firm's direct sales force sells Batesville caskets to licensed funeral homes in the US, as well as in the UK, Australia, Mexico, South Africa, and Puerto Rico....

Though it buries its customers, Carriage Services hasn't come close to burying its competition. It's a large US death care company, but it trails far behind Service Corporation International (SCI) and rivals Stewart Enterprises and StoneMor Partners....

Death with Dignity has been the way to go for many in the UK, where the company is the largest provider of funeral services, cremations, and pre-arranged funeral plans. The company operates more than 500 funeral locations and 22 crematoria across the country....

Eternal Reefs has an alternative for eternity. The company creates man-made memorial reefs as an environmental alternative to burial or standard cremation. Cremated remains are mixed with concrete to form "Reef Balls" -- structures that resemble natural reef formations and are designed to last more than 500 years....

A reputation for character is important for the story of Funespaña, but the plot is of equal significance. Providing more than 45,000 funeral services a year, Funespaña operates cemeteries, funeral parlors, and crematoriums, mostly in Spain (where it is present in about 40 cities), but also in Buenos Aires and Rosario, Argentina, and Budapest, Hungary....

Goliath Casket caters to customers who've lived larger than life. The company's "triple-wide" casket, its largest model, has become increasingly popular since the firm's founding in the late 1980s, with a 20% rise in sales each year for the model. Goliath's other eight 20-gauge steel models range from 29 inches wide to 52 inches wide and up to eight feet long (that's wider than a king-size bed and taller than most humans)....

International Research & Recovery Corporation puts your sparkling personality to work -- albeit postmortem. The company, which primarily does business as LifeGem, creates diamonds from the cremated remains of humans and animals. LifeGem sells memorial diamonds, which cost $3,000 and up....

Some people are so committed to environmentalism they choose to tread lightly upon the earth even when they’re six feet under it. J C Atkinson and Son specializes in manufacturing caskets and coffins that are environmentally friendly....

Service Corporation International (SCI) is to death what H&R Block is to taxes. SCI, the largest funeral and cemetery services company in North America, operates about 1,340 funeral homes and about 365 cemeteries in 40-plus US states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, Canada, and Germany....

Fly me to the moon. Let me play among the stars. Let me see what spring is like -- on Jupiter and Mars. If your loved ones coo this Frank Sinatra love song, it's likely they will be interested in Space Services someday. Through its Celestis unit, the firm will launch one or more grams of cremated remains into Earth or Lunar orbit, onto the moon's surface, or into deep space....

StoneMor Partners can show you some of the best locations for an extended stay, locations where you may even want to reside permanently. It operates more than 220 cemeteries and about 55 funeral homes in some two dozen states, primarily along the East Coast....

The York Group makes boxes nearly too beautiful to part with. The nation's #2 casket maker (after Hillenbrand's Batesville Casket) produces metal and all-wood caskets, memorials and plaques, and cremation containers. (Cremation is the industry's growing trend -- a third of US deaths are handled this way.) York is staking its vitality on an incentive program designed to boost sales via independent funeral homes....

Aurora Casket Company won't meet you at the Pearly Gates, but it will get you there in style. The largest privately-owned casket and cremation urn manufacturer nationwide, it sells directly to licensed funeral homes. Though renowned for its stainless-steel box, Aurora Caskets makes caskets in a variety of woods and metals....

High Sierra Gardens provides eternal rest amidst eternal beauty. The company specializes in placing cremated remains in natural settings within the majestic Sierra National Forest in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, just south of Yosemite National Park. It files all needed forms, scatters remains, and provides a photo of the site and locating information for about $225....

Hillenbrand knows a thing or two about life and death. As the holding company for Batesville Casket Company, Hillenbrand sits on top of the death care industry, supplying nearly half the coffins used in the US. Batesville, its sole operating company, makes a variety of caskets in materials ranging from hardwoods to stainless steel....

Rose Hills arose - literally - from the hills of southern California to become one of the largest single-location cemeteries in the US. Rose Hills Company operates the Rose Hills Mortuary and Memorial Park, which spans some 1,400 acres near Los Angeles....