Private Label Caskets Winding Down Operations Citing Tariffs and Volatility

In light of President Trump’s March 2025 tariffs on aluminum and steel and other economic concerns, Private Label Caskets has decided to cease operations as of December 31, 2025 after more than 17 years in business.

On October 20, 2025, Private Label customers received a memo explaining the decision. Citing “recent global economic volatility and newly imposed tariffs — especially those impacting imported steel, wood, and caskets,” the memo explains that “these conditions make it increasingly difficult to guarantee affordable, stable pricing and dependable supply.”

The memo, which is also posted to the company’s website, was accompanied by a “tariff free pricing” inventory list. Customers were encouraged to order a “larger supply” of the remaining inventory, adding that they will be supported by the company until this inventory is depleted.

A thoughtful, if difficult, decision

Monday’s memo, coupled with a July 2025 press release by Private Label Caskets, show that this decision was not made lightly or quickly. Although the company stated in July that they were “weathering the tariff rollercoaster after a record-setting 29% growth in 2024,” Private Label representatives were quite transparent in explaining the impact of tariffs over the past eight years.

Carlos Figueroa, of Private Label’s parent company Buchanan Group, stated in the July release that tariffs were first instituted in 2017 and have “multiplied” through the years, reaching up to 135% at one time. Figueroa added that the “big tariff shock hit” the company in May, leading Private Label to add a 30% surcharge to cover tariffs — only the third time in the company’s history that prices were raised. 

Even then, Private Label and Buchanan Group owner Bruce W. Buchanan openly explained that he understood the intended goal of tariffs, but hoped that caskets could be exempt.

“I appreciate what the president is trying to accomplish by levying tariffs,” said Buchanan in July. “There are key manufacturing sectors that should come back to the U.S., but I don’t believe that caskets are one of those. Funeral homes already operate at thin margins; we need whatever help we can get with the cost of products.”

Looking forward

Before reaching the conclusion to cease operations, Private Label explored other alternatives, including “nearshoring and U.S. sourcing” according to the memo, but determined that winding down was the “best path” for the company and its customers — and, ultimately, for the families they serve. 

The December wind-down may be a case of one door closing, but another opening, as Private Label leaders are actively seeking a “relationship with a domestic manufacturer.” 

This spring, multiple media outlets predicted the potential impact of Trump’s tariffs on funeral costs, shortly after the 25% tariff on imported steel and aluminum was announced on March 12. 

Repositories of Bones, Part Two: The Winding Underworld of Catacombs

Narrow subterranean corridors interlace for miles, linking vestibules, chambers, and hidden entrances. Ceilings and temperatures down here are chilly, and damp dimness pervades the disorienting, psychologically confrontational environment.

Both ossuaries and catacombs originally served society in practical but distinct ways, providing alternatives to standard practice when burial space ran out. Catacombs (the name comes from the Latin phrase for “beside the quarry”,) were built from disused underground caverns and passages reclaimed for new graves, unlike ossuaries where bones were placed after the decomposing elsewhere.

This extinct form of burial from ancient death care is unique — many sites remain accessible and allow close-up examination by scholars, death care professionals, and the general public. Once relatively common across Europe and surrounding regions, catacombs today are primarily tourist sites, macabre spectacles in high demand.

Famous examples

When we hear “catacombs” these days, the widely-known site in Paris almost always springs to mind first, though interestingly it’s relatively small, as catacombs go. About twenty meters of corridors and larger chambers display the skulls and long bones of millions of individuals in elaborate arrangements, smaller bones tossed behind the ornate facade.

The place is slightly misnamed. From the official website:
The site was consecrated as the “Paris Municipal Ossuary” on April 7, 1786, and, from that time forward, took on the mythical name of “Catacombs”, in reference to the Roman catacombs, which had fascinated the public since their discovery.

Because of health problems in the city limits, Paris cemeteries which had been consistently in use for a full thousand years (the city itself has been around for 2,000) were emptied, and occupants removed to caverns of a municipal quarry. This is what happens with any proper ossuary. Other catacombs are underground primary burial places where the newly dead were placed.

Why the deliberate misnaming? Originators thought the term more poetic and believed it would support acceptance, perhaps hoping to offset some of the scandal of its creation. Over a period of years during the mid-1700s, remains from the largest, oldest cemeteries in the city were relocated at night, taking place under cover of darkness to avoid public outrage.

History

The first catacombs on record have Christian associations. They began with the church as resting places for clergy and were intended for reverence or contemplation. As with ossuaries, land shortages and burial restrictions contributed to their creation.

Catacombs were once widely used, and they were still commonly added to up through the 1800s. There’s a long and illustrative history of their active use. These places present a spectacle of human mortality that still fascinates widely, and anyone can visit the real thing in Italy to see it firsthand — Palermo, San Sebastiano, and Domitilla which dates back to 120 AD. And San Callisto, one of the originals, boasts a crypt of popes.

Death spaces across time

Such truly extraordinary places offer an intimate view of a bygone era’s relationship with mortality. These are death spaces straight from history; today’s more perfunctory, technical equivalents of prep rooms, cemeteries, even columbaria and memorial halls or regionally astonishing examples in places like New Orleans, don’t have the same sort of architectural gravitas and expression. It’s an authentically mesmerizing view of the changes in social relationships with mortality and death care practices over time.