Key takeaways

If you find a market for your product, keep listening to customers for brand expansion. This business owner is taking his flatpack coffin idea to beloved pets.

When looking at disrupting a traditional business, take time to learn the pain points of customers and give them what they want.

Develop manufacturing systems which are easy to understand so that others can step in and take over when you want a break.

For Kiwis as they near retirement age, many are counting down until they can stop the day job and have some free time to hang out with their friends and grandchildren.

For others, like mechanical engineer Mike Nelson, who owned his own business in his 50s, not so much.

“From the age of 55 I was actively looking for a vehicle to take into retirement. Being an active guy, my main fear was that I would get bored. I wanted something to keep me occupied and also to supplement our retirement income,” he says.

“And I’ve solved it rather too well,” he laughs.

Mike, 72 and his wife Marisa, 70, have a flatpack coffin business, Carried Away.

When he and Marisa tell other people their age what they’re doing, it stops the conversation, says Marisa.

“Most can see it for what it is, a service that we offer. Some look horrified and don’t want to think about it,” adds Mike.

How it all began

For the entrepreneur, inspiration struck when he was organising his mother’s funeral nine years ago when she was just six weeks’ short of her 97th birthday.

His mother, Margaret, had asked for a bright yellow coffin and a smiley face drawn at either end. When Mike ran this by the funeral director, they looked appalled, but said it would be $1000 on top of the already daunting $1800 price for the coffin.

Mike decided he would make the coffin himself and did it just the way she wanted it.

“We had quite a unique funeral for her too, it was a celebration of her life and I firmly believe that’s what it should be,” he says.

The engineer decided he and his family weren’t the only ones wanting to have more say in customising the coffin of a loved one and the business was born.

The entrepreneur started off small. “I knew nothing about the industry so deliberately wanted to keep it quiet while I did my learning.

Six years ago Mike and Marisa moved to Putāruru in Waikato, from South Auckland, and, with more facilities to work from - they have two sheds and a container totalling 1000 sq ft at the back of the house - Mike took the opportunity to redesign the coffins and to launch on a bigger scale with a flatpack offering.

The flatpack coffins are sent freight-free to urban areas, says Mike. He has a South Island distributor in Motueka, Ren-Tai Enterprises, which allows them to offer a one to two day delivery service nationwide.

The coffins are usually made of MDF, with some made of plywood. They range in price from $650 for a direct cremation casket and from $865 for a bare coffin.

The average sale is around $1200 and pricing generally sits below that of undertakers’ pricing, says Mike.

Promoting their flatpack coffins

Word has gotten out through the website, word of mouth and PR, and the Nelsons have Facebook and Google Ads which point people towards the website.

From the look of the gallery of the Carried Away website, families and friends are achieving great things, decorating their coffins to reflect their loved one’s life and interests.

Eight years after launching the business, the Nelsons work with two part-timers, and work around 30 to 40 hours a week on the business.

“One of the things that I’ve spent a lot of time with is production. What I’ve done is set out the way the product flows throughout the factory,” says Mike.

The ideas keep coming

You would think by his early 70s, the engineer might be thinking of winding down, but his to-do list keeps getting replenished.

His latest idea is to make cremation urns which will be ready for sale in a couple of months.

The couple are also exploring the idea of pet coffins after a number of inquiries.

“I think with a lot of families now, people have a ceremony for the children who are very aware of where Tiger lies in the garden. I think it’s a lovely thing, they say some words, it’s getting them to appreciate that we live and die,” says Mike.

Meanwhile there appears to be no immediate exit route for the entrepreneur. “My objective is to develop it, to get it a bit bigger,” says Mike.

“I believe we offer something unique in New Zealand and the more customers the better. We’ll keep rolling on,” he says.

For the full article read on Stuff here.

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Carried Away, a business for a couple who didn't want to retire