Any artsy people reading?

Jeeze, forgive the typos. I’m a little excited about this one.

I think it sounds like a great idea. Your urns could be individual and special, just like the person going in and the cause to which the money went. I’d buy one! :)

heh well I’m glad the first post taught me how to spell urn. Again, I was a little excited about this.

I agree. Good idea. Have different tiers of urns I’d say. People would buy higher priced urns if they knew the extra money went to a good cause. It’s quite a valiant way to go out I’d say.

I thought so too. Now I just need to figure out how to do it. I am somewhat artistic and I really like doing that stuff, I just don’t think mine would be good enough for selling…even if it is for a good cause. What would the first step be? Some kind of license I imagine… How do I get that?

Maybe the first step would be to ask a funeral home, or a vet about the volume you would need to prepare for- then make a design around that. And make sure they aren’t too easily breakable. Are you planning for some kind of ceramic, or wood, or what type of material? The lid would need to fit pretty tightly, or be able to be sealed. I doubt you would need a license if you sell them on ebay with pictures of each one.

I’d like to do a variety. All sorts of different things… That way everyone would find something they like. Hell, I’d even do requests. :) I gotta come up with a logo though… good idea.

The first step would be to write up a loose business plan. A logo would be nice. Make it something real recognizable that you can stamp on the bottom of your urns.

You don’t really need to get a license until you actually have sold a few of these things. That way you’re not preemptively spending money in case this thing doesn’t take off.

You could consider yourself a independent contractor if you’re the only one making money off the venture. However, I wouldn’t focus too much on this on the front end.

You might even do a little research on how other urns are typically made. It could give you a few ideas.

Well the whole plan is to give all the money to charities, important researches and all that jazz. I’m getting very excited about this and I haven’t even scraped the surface or what I need to do.

Getting on that research stuff right away.

http://www.sba.gov/smallbusinessplanner/index.html

You might check out this link. It’ll give you a much better idea of what’s involved in starting a business. Specifically, check out the ‘Write a business plan’ link.

awesome! Thank you bodyhead. Lurve to you.

Very nice idea. One caution though…you will probably not be able to give all the money to charity. Unless you get all materials/time/artistic talent donated, you will need some money to keep going. Think instead in terms of profits, the money you have left after paying for supplies, talent, and overhead. Consider also keeping a small portion of your profits to expand. If your idea is really successful, it may be possible to make a living off of it, too. Doing well by doing good!

Rock on, krose. Good luck!

@greylady: “Maybe the first step would be to ask a funeral home…”

No, not a good idea. Very few independent funeral homes exist and the corporate structure is vertically integrated (ie independent suppliers not usually allowed).

Better to start with local organizations that support the anti-big business funeral industry.

Your endeavour could be a “non-profit” industry which allows participant’s to earn an income, but overall profits are a)used to expand and b)distributed to charitable organizations.

Good idea.

Man, I’ve come up with so many things in the past hour! I don’t know who to tell them to! I’ve decided to go to a ceramics place to look into getting all the materials neccesary, I’m going to have a group meeting with all my close friends that just happen to be very creative. I think my hardest part right now will be the actual manufacturing… Definitely going to get it all started on ebay! Thank you guys so much for your tips, I will be using all of them in some form or fashion. I’ll keep you updated if you’re interested… If you have any more tips please let me know!!

@ivgr. My answer is about how to make the urn so it will be able to hold the correct amount of ashes, not about trying to sell urns to a funeral home.

@krose: Definitely update us on this thread. Good luck!

This is awesome! My guess is that you’d function as a non-profit type of business. I can see this idea taking off very well – I read Juxtapose regularly, and I could see a ton of those artists jumping at a chance to design a line of cool, charitable urns.

For the record, I think this is a pretty good business idea, and making profit is not a bad thing, especially if it gets reinvested into the business.

There is some urn competition out there (I Googled it on your behalf ;) so do look for ways to differentiate your product from the mass market ones. For ways to market it on a small/smart budget check out Guerrilla Marketing .