His mother, “a good Scottish lady”, had a stroke at 93 so Nelson realised he should start looking into funeral arrangements.
“I went to a local undertaker and said ‘I know nothing about funerals, just educate me’. So he went through all this, that and the other, and at the end of the conversation, he said, ‘What sort of coffin would you like?’
“And I said, ‘Well, mum’s a good Scottish lady, so something affordable?’ And he said, ‘Well, our cheapest coffin is $1850’ – I was glad I was sitting down.”
The Putāruru engineer eventually made his mother’s coffin the way she wanted – bright yellow with a smiley face drawn at either end – and this was the inspiration for Carried Away, a flatpack coffin business he runs with his wife Marisa.
The business has grown steadily, Nelson told RNZ’s Nine to Noon programme today.
“I designed something that I thought was a good idea, and put it together, and started very slowly to put them to market, because I knew very little about the industry. So I certainly wasn’t trying to get too big too quickly, because if they had a disaster, it would then be a big one.”
The flatpacks are simple to assemble, keep transportation costs down and also form a healthy part of the grieving process, Nelson said.
“People, maybe a group of two or three family members, will sit down and start figuring out how to put this thing together.
“Inevitably, conversation will flow to the person that’s died and what they’re saying is that it’s a great way of working through grief in a non-threatening environment, and by the time the funeral itself comes up, they’re sort of feeling a lot better about the whole process.”
A bare coffin starts at $865 and the typical spend for a more personalised one is $1500.
Just as people are personalising coffins, they are also moving away from traditional funerals, Nelson said.
“That’s something we did with Mum’s funeral as well. She always said facetiously that she wanted bubbles with her funeral.
“So, where we had the funeral, we had a mezzanine floor. I hired a bubble machine, and as she went out, she had her bubbles.”
