Meet The Disruptors: Justin Crowe of Parting Stone On Disrupting the Deathcare Industry, One Stone at a Time
An Interview With Fotis Georgiadis
When I first recognized the problem that ashes were uncomfortable to live with and were inhibiting grief for millions of people, I began to look for solutions. My first idea was to create jewelry with the cremated remains inside to allow people to carry the remains of loved ones with them. We created a minimum viable product and even sold a few necklaces, but the experiment was ultimately a failure.
As a part of our series about business leaders who are shaking things up in their industry, I had the pleasure of interviewing Justin Crowe.
Justin Crowe is the founder of Parting Stone, a death tech startup reinventing the cremation experience by offering a solidified form of remains so families can hold their loved ones again. After he lost his grandfather in 2014, Justin started asking people about their experiences with loss. What he learned inspired him to develop a new form of solidified remains that are beautiful, clean, and memorable so that families can continue to feel a bond with their departed.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dig in, our readers would like to get to know you a bit more. Can you tell us a bit about your “backstory”? What led you to this particular career path?
I’ve been a creative entrepreneur for much of my career and after I lost my grandfather in 2014, I started asking people about their experiences with loss. It shocked me that for all of the inspiring stories I heard about people’s lives, there were these tragic stories about living with cremated remains.
One person described sweeping up ashes strewn with bone fragments after they accidentally spilled. Another told a horror story about scattering ashes with their family on a windy day. And perhaps most heartbreaking, I spoke with many people who were stowing their loved ones’ cremated remains in closets, basements and even garages, oftentimes for decades.
The discrepancy between the intimacy of our closest relationships and the coldness of our experience of living with their remains was disconcerting. I thought, we don’t accept this type of poor experience in any other part of modern life, so why are we accepting it around one of our most treasured possessions?
The core of these poor experiences was the unfortunate granular form of remains being returned following cremation. So, I set out to develop a new, comfortable, form of solidified remains that would offer families choosing cremation a 100% alternative to ashes.
A few things were important to me for this new form of remains:
- Solidified remains should allow people to hold their loved ones again.
- They should create community and make it easy, simple and memorable to share remains with friends and family.
- They should be beautiful enough for families to want their loved ones at the kitchen table during dinner.
- Most importantly, solidified remains should give intention and purpose to remains in order to continue a bond and connection to our departed.
Can you tell our readers what it is about the work you’re doing that’s disruptive?
We’re introducing a completely new category of human remains to an industry that is notoriously stagnant and afraid of change. We all accept that receiving a black plastic box of ash and bone fragments after cremation is “normal,” but it doesn’t have to be anymore.
For the first time ever, there is a positive experience available. Solidified remains offer families and loved ones a way to continue having a connection with their departed. We can hold, share, and proudly display solidified remains, which is a gamechanger, especially at a time when family gatherings are difficult due to COVID-19 restrictions and health concerns.
Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?
When I first recognized the problem that ashes were uncomfortable to live with and were inhibiting grief for millions of people, I began to look for solutions. My first idea was to create jewelry with the cremated remains inside to allow people to carry the remains of loved ones with them. We created a minimum viable product and even sold a few necklaces, but the experiment was ultimately a failure.
What I realized though, was that these few people that we helped still had 10 cups of ashes left over that ended up in their closet. This is when we realized that the problem was not that we needed a better keepsake. The problem was the cremated remains themselves. This gave us our key insight that led us to invent a new form of human and animal remains and eliminate ashes all together.
Cremation urns and keepsakes put a bandage on the problem of ashes being uncomfortable, while solidified remains solve it.
In today’s parlance, being disruptive is usually a positive adjective. But is disrupting always good? When do we say the converse, that a system or structure has ‘withstood the test of time’? Can you articulate to our readers when disrupting an industry is positive, and when disrupting an industry is ‘not so positive’? Can you share some examples of what you mean?
In our case, disruption is a net positive for all parties. Families want a way to feel comfortable with and close to the remains of their loved ones and not have them hidden in a cold steel urn. Funeral homes want better ways to serve their families remains then in a zip-tied plastic bag of ash. We are indeed disrupting the cremation industry by offering the first alternative to “ashes” in 20,000 years… but no one is losing. We’re building a new market on top of the existing infrastructure.
Can you share 3 of the best words of advice you’ve gotten along your journey? Please give a story or example for each.
Early in my career, I was writing for an online art publication. When I started, the editor told me “You can write whatever you want, as long as you’re not wrong.” Although this was a little crass, these boundaries gave me permission to be creative, curious, and take risks… but required me to validate all my ideas in solid research. It also implied that people don’t have to agree with me — even him.
I still think about this advice when I am coming up with new ideas.
We are sure you aren’t done. How are you going to shake things up next?
Over the last two years, we’ve realized that solidified remains are the beginning of the memorial experience for families. They receive the solidified remains and then they leave one of mom’s stones on a beach, they share her remains with the family, they display her solidified remains in glass containers, or they paint on the stones with her grandchildren. These activities are an essential part of the healing experience that we want to encourage and provide tools to realize. This year, Parting Stone will be creating inspirational ritual guides, products, and customization options to offer a framework for solidified remains memorial experiences. We want to revolutionize the way families grieve through positive experiences and improving the rituals around death is the next step.
Do you have a book, podcast, or talk that’s had a deep impact on your thinking? Can you share a story with us? Can you explain why it was so resonant with you?
A book that helped shape my thinking how we talk about solidified remains is Play Bigger. The book is about category design and how a business can frame the point of view around a product or service to have more impact. In our case, this book helped us learn how to position solidified remains as a form of remains, rather than a keepsake or product. This point of view has allowed Parting Stone to reach more families and solve a real anxiety in their life. No more uncomfortable ash.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
My favorite Life Lesson Quote is from Monty Python and the Holy Grail in the scene where they are rolling a cart through an impoverished area collecting people’s dead from their homes. One-character attempts to toss a dead man on the cart, but he yells out “I’m not dead!” Over the years, this quote has inspired me to make sure I am living each day fully and continuing to remind people that I am still here, pushing forward, screaming and yelling about it until I can’t anymore.
At the end of the scene, they knock the man out and toss him the cart with the other dead people… I’m an optimist and a realist.
You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. 
We believe that a “Death Curious Movement” would have a profound impact on mental health. In the United States, we tend to avoid talking about death, grief, and mortality. This means that when a death occurs, we are often deeply uncomfortable talking about it publicly, and sometimes embarrassed about our internal feelings. This solitude during a challenging time can lead to extreme loneliness, and increased grief. One of the goals of solidified remains is to make human remains comfortable… even desirable… to touch and hold. This is just one small tool to break down anxiety around the idea of death and bring families and communities together heal with compassion and open dialogue.
There are many organizations already perusing similar missions including the End-of-Life Network by Round Glass, Reimagine: End of Life, and Death Cafes. We are big fans of their work.
How can our readers follow you online?
Listen to our Death Decoded Podcast wherever you listen to podcasts
Follow us on Instagram @partingstone
Visit our website: https://partingstone.com/
This was very inspiring. Thank you so much for joining us!
Meet The Disruptors: Justin Crowe of Parting Stone On Disrupting the Deathcare Industry, One Stone… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
