By Thomas A. Parmalee
In an era where cremation has become the dominant form of disposition across North America, suppliers to the funeral profession must rethink not only what they make — but how they deliver value.
Few companies illustrate that shift more clearly than Starmark, a wholly owned subsidiary of Vandor Corp. that has quietly evolved from a niche cremation innovator into a rapidly expanding, vertically integrated force in funeral service.
At the center of that evolution is Michael Jewart, Starmark’s chief commercial officer, who joined the company last year to expand its international footprint and deepen its relationships with funeral professionals.
Having formerly worked in the global products division at Service Corporation International, Jewart also served as president of Eterneva, which makes diamonds from cremated remains, and was a consultant with Revurbia before joining Starmark.
Built for Cremation Before It Became Mainstream
To truly understand the birth of Starmark, you must start with Bruce Elder, a funeral products entrepreneur best known for the brands Bruce Casket, Elder Casket and Elder-Wilbert Casket.
In 1972, Bruce renamed the Richmond, Indiana, located part of his business “Vandor,” which was a combination of his parent’s names: Vance and Doris. Over time, Vandor evolved to expand beyond funeral products, focusing also on international electrical and automotive parts, as well as packaging products for the wire, cable and other linear products industries.
In 1989, Bruce’s sons Alan Elder and the late Mark Elder, together with the late Gerald Davis, teamed up on a new initiative: Elder Davis, Inc., which introduced the Elderlite corrugated fiberboard casket as the first widely adopted corrugated cloth‑covered burial and cremation caskets and alternative containers.
As a strategic next chapter, the three formally established Starmark in 2004 under the Vandor umbrella.
“The fun part — what is so unique — is that it was a cremation and green-burial-first company,” Jewart said. “It was founded as part of Vandor Funeral Products, which served the overall funeral marketplace.”
At a time when cremation was still well below 50% in the U.S., Starmark’s founders made a deliberate bet on where the profession was heading.
“They got in a room and asked, what are we going to do?” Jewart said. “They followed a Wayne Gretzky analogy: Skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it was.”
That early conviction shaped the company’s DNA. While traditional suppliers remained focused on burial merchandise, Starmark doubled down on cremation and green burial, developing products, systems and merchandising approaches focused on cremation and green burial.
“I give a lot of credit to Alan Elder and (the late) Gerald Davis,” Jewart said. “They were in a business a long time together … and they got in a room and said, ‘This is what we are going to do.’ No one was really focused on adding value in the cremation and green burial spaces, but they doubled down on that every single year and created amazing products.”
An ‘Incubator’ for New Ways to Serve Funeral Homes
From the outset, Starmark differentiated itself through engineering-driven product development, particularly in cremation merchandising.
Today, the company holds more than 85 current and pending patents, covering everything from rental insert systems to specialized viewing solutions.
“We are engineering products, making them better, focusing on taking costs out,” Jewart said. “And Starmark focuses on passing those savings on to our funeral professional customers.”
Among its most influential contributions to the profession:
- Rental casket systems and inserts, which made ceremonial cremation services more accessible and profitable.
- Viewing and identification solutions, replacing makeshift setups with dignified presentation options.
- The Chaise Bed Viewer, designed to facilitate private farewells and small gatherings.
“Everyone deserves the right to be honored in their final moments,” Jewart said, commenting on the company’s innovations, which he emphasized are not only about presentation: They have a direct impact on funeral home revenue.
He also noted that while many people think of cremation caskets or rental caskets when they think of Starmark, it manufactures green and traditional caskets as well, having bought CJ Boots Casket Co. in 2015.
Asked about the current ownership structure of the company, Jewart said, “Vandor remains family owned together with key management leadership shareholders.”
Alan Elder, the chairman of Vandor, remains actively involved in Starmark, Jewart said.
As of today, 17 additional Davis and Elder family members work in the business, including Cooper Barry, service center director; Kirk Barry, director of local accounts; Landon Elder, director of operations; Arie Elder, vice president of merchandising and marketing; Justin Davis, who is president of Vandor Innovations; Amanda Elder, director of experience enablement; Sydney (Elder) Fetko, senior customer service representative, and Jordan (Elder) Sheehan, business communications manager.
A Broad and Expanding Product Portfolio
While cremation remains its “bread and butter,” Starmark’s portfolio today is far more extensive.
“We lean into that,” Jewart said.
Core categories include:
- Cremation containers and rental inserts.
- Metal and wood rental and ceremonial caskets.
- Permanent caskets, including wood lines strengthened by acquisitions.
- Goliath oversize metal and hardwood caskets, as well as outer burial containers.
- Urns, including high-volume lines like Sure~Lock and the sustainably produced Richmond urn.
- Crematory equipment and accessories, such as rollers and operational supplies.
- Green and alternative products, including water cremation and green burial shrouds, hemp urns and all-wood caskets.
As interest in environmentally conscious options grows, Starmark has expanded its green product offerings, though demand for green burial products in general remains irregular. One of its recent innovations is a patented wool shroud designed specifically for alkaline hydrolysis, Jewart said.
“When you use water cremation … clothes won’t deteriorate,” Jewart said. “Yet you can put someone into the alkaline hydrolysis chamber in Starmark’s shroud, so they are not unclothed … it protects dignity.”
One standout example of vertical integration is the company’s Richmond urn line.
“We take scrap from the casket manufacturing process, recycle the best wood … and so there is as little waste as possible, and we make the urns – they are made in Richmond, Indiana,” Jewart said.
The company also supports third-party suppliers through warehousing and distribution, leveraging its infrastructure to bring additional products to market.
“Part of having an international distribution network is we have the ability to help other suppliers,” Jewart said. “It is very capital intensive to have any kind of distribution network – and most small businesses cannot make that investment. And we work with partners to distribute their products for them.”
The Vandor Advantage
What truly distinguishes Starmark is its position within Vandor’s broader industrial ecosystem.
According to Starmark’s website, “Vandor also manufactures products for a wide variety of world-wide public and private sector companies. These products include injection molded plastic automotive parts for fourteen car companies, and packaging reels for wire and cable and other linear product industries. Vandor’s funeral products division also manufactures white labeled and branded Elderlite Cloth Covered, CJ Boots Signature Hardwood, and the Starmark® Cremation Product brands for casket distributors as well as casket interior components for casket manufacturers.”
As it relates to funeral products, vertical integration spans:
- Manufacturing (including metal, paper, plastics, wood, and wound paper tubes).
- Product design and engineering.
- Logistics, including its own trucking company, Starmark Express.
- Innovation pipelines, through “Vandor Innovations.”
The scale is substantial.
“Vandor has over 1 million square feet of real estate in North America,” Jewart said. “From hundreds of thousands of square feet for manufacturing plants to simple storage areas.”
Roughly 330 employees support the operation across manufacturing, logistics, and commercial activities.
This structure proved especially critical during the COVID-19 pandemic, when many companies struggled to source products and fulfill orders from funeral homes.
“Starmark had the ability to supply when others could not,” Jewart said. “Because of the vertical nature of our supply chain.”
That integration has also positioned the company well in today’s tariff-sensitive environment.
“Tariffs have been a fantastic thing for Starmark,” Jewart said. “We don’t deal with that … for the most part, our supply chain and manufacturing is in the U.S.”
That’s something Starmark wants the profession to know.
“Starmark is one of the very few suppliers that can say that it has continental North American coverage,” Jewart said. “What makes us unique and drives our growth is that almost everything we sell is made here in the USA and Canada. Others will say North America because they are making products in Mexico. But ours are made here and the jobs are in the USA and Canada.”
From Manufacturer to Market-Facing Organization
For much of its history, Starmark operated primarily as a manufacturing organization. That is now changing.
Starmark was intentional in hiring a high-growth executive like Jewart. The company’s mindset shift has sparked an aggressive geographic expansion. ‘We’re going to be a funeral professional commercial organization,’” Jewart said.
Historically, the company has maintained a strong presence east of the Mississippi, supported by manufacturing in Indiana and operations in Florida.
“Shipping from Indiana to California or Seattle is very expensive,” Jewart said.
The solution: a decentralized network of regional manufacturing and service centers.
“Starmark has been down a path to develop a continental network that could serve funeral homes directly,” he said.
That strategy is gaining traction.
“Last month, Starmark opened three new locations in Seattle, Portland and Denver,” Jewart said. “We have an operational presence in over 20 locations today — and we serve over 50 markets,” he said.
These facilities can be large or small – some may consist of little more than a truck, a few thousand square feet to store product and a team member who focuses on serving funeral professionals, he said.
The result is a more responsive, flexible delivery model capable of serving both high-volume crematories and smaller funeral homes. “Rather than delivering a truckload of Safeway Cremation Containers, Starmark can drop off a few at a time when a customer needs it,” he said.
While it has been building a factory-direct model, the company still relies heavily on – and strongly values – its relationship with funeral product distributors nationwide. And a hybrid approach has allowed it to build a more flexible delivery network, Jewart said.
“We love Vandor’s distributors,” he said. “We are not bypassing them … and working directly with funeral homes is an additional channel.”
Nationwide, Starmark works with about 100 funeral product distributors, although the “major” ones probably amount to about 10, Jewart said.
“A lot of them are aging out, closing their doors or selling their business, so that distributor network is becoming more challenging,” he said. “So, this is not so much taking them out of the picture as adding another channel. We see the Vandor distributor business continuing to be strong as a channel, and we now have an additional channel.”
Growth Through Expansion and Acquisition
Starmark’s growth strategy combines organic expansion with targeted M&A.
“It is very fair to say Starmark is active in the M&A space and expects over the next couple of years to acquire more organizations,” Jewart said.
Recent acquisitions, including container and urn businesses, have helped broaden capabilities and strengthen product lines. At the same time, Vandor continues to “spin up” new ventures internally when supply gaps emerge, Jewart said.
The results prove that its approach is working. By obsessing on the products and services funeral professionals need, Starmark is experiencing growth tech companies would be thrilled with.
Culture as a Competitive Advantage
Despite its scale, Starmark retains the characteristics of a family-owned enterprise.
“Vandor remains family owned,” Jewart said. “The focus is on the Starmark family serving family funeral homes.”
That culture shows up in tenure and leadership style.
“There are a number of people who have been here for more than 40 years — you just don’t see that anymore,” he said.
It also informs hiring and operations.
“We want to care for each other and challenge each other professionally,” Jewart said. “There is not a lot of bureaucracy.”
Funeral professionals unfamiliar with Starmark are often surprised by its scale and sophistication, Jewart said.
But beyond scale, the company’s value proposition is increasingly clear: Combine manufacturing control, patented innovation and a growing distribution network to deliver practical, cost-effective solutions tailored to cremation.
“Starmark is going to drive costs lower for funeral professionals in markets – and we’ll do it with great products that add value to families,” Jewart said.
In a profession navigating fundamental change, that combination — efficiency, innovation, and service alignment — positions Starmark as a strategic partner for funeral homes adapting to what comes next.
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