Box in a Box

Marty made his daily pilgrimage to the mailbox. As usual, it was crammed with one or two bills that needed paying and a plethora of junk mail. By far, the biggest offender of landfill stuffing is the funeral industry. He always received at least two and up to five letters per week, inviting him to various restaurants. After attending a seminar about burial and cremation options, he was offered a free meal. Marty never thought that caskets and chicken pot pie complimented each other, but apparently morticians do.

Annoyed with the relentless bombardment of junk mail, Marty did some independent research on the funeral industry. What he found was dead people make many living people very wealthy. The average cost of a casket to the funeral home is $300 to $500 dollars. A funeral home sells them from $1200 to $1600 on average, generating up to 500% in profit. The high-end boxes can cost $5000+. Cremation urns, although much cheaper, are as profitable. With profit margins like this, he wanted in.

Marty owned a small but profitable vending company. He wanted to expand his company by offering items people wouldn’t expect to find in vending machines. Besides candy, soda, and chips, some of his machines that were placed in hotels, offered hair care products, t-shirts, underwear, and slippers.

He idolized Carvana. The person who invented car vending is a genius. He knew he could attain the same level of success with the right product to sell at the correct location. The new branch of his vending company was called Box in a Box.

Like real estate, vending is all about location. After extensive research, Marty decided the best locations for his new machines were churches, synagogues, mosques, and nursing homes. Once a company or organization agreed to host a machine, they would receive a small commission on everything that was sold from that machine. Although hospitals would be a great place to locate a casket vending machine, they were reluctant to take part in the program. Management felt that having a machine that sold coffins in the lobby projected a negative image.

Product placement is also very important. Churches positioned in wealthy neighborhoods receive machines stocked with a high-end line of products which still sold for less than the local funeral homes. Churches and nursing homes in poorer neighborhoods received machines filled with coffins, instead of caskets because they are cheaper. These machines even offered a build your own kit complete with hammer and nails. Since there are no laws requiring a body to be placed in a box, burial shrouds were also available.

At first, lawyers representing funeral home associations threatened to sue Marty for unfair business practices. A few of his machines were vandalized, and some morticians refused to work on bodies when the family supplied their own casket. That stopped when Marty’s attorneys quietly reminded them that there were no laws on the books requiring embalming. The only reason for their profession is to stop the corps from emitting a putrid stench before it’s buried. If people can stand the smell, morticians are unnecessary.

People are adaptable, especially when it involves saving hundreds of dollars. In time, Marty’s machines became the norm. His vending company grew into a nationwide organization. The Box in a Box logo began showing up on stadium walls and roadside billboards. TV and radio ads filled the airwaves as the concept grew in popularity. Marty was invited to appear on talk shows and Saturday Night Live did a skit about his company. It wasn’t long before Marty’s brain child surged past his idle, Carvana. After all, everyone will need a box in a box, eventually.