5 Tremendous Reasons to Try and to Trust Terrybear

How do you quantify trust? It’s not something you can touch, photograph, manufacture, or sell — but it’s crucial to the success of any relationship, whether personal or professional. Your families must trust that you will properly care for them and their loved one, and you have to trust that your partners will provide quality products and reliable services to help you do that well. Terrybear Urns & Memorials is that kind of partner, and that’s why they’ve been a trusted, preferred provider to deathcare professionals for nearly 40 years.

Over the last year or so, Connecting Directors has had the opportunity to get up close and personal with the Terrybear team and learn how they strive to serve the profession with care, consistency, and creativity. Here are five things we’ve learned — and that we really, truly want you to know.

1. They’re incredibly innovative

Terrybear’s origin story illustrates their commitment to constant innovation. In 1986, the company’s founder, Terry, was selling stuffed animals on a Minneapolis street corner. When the Twins reached the World Series the next year, he pivoted to selling Twins merchandise outside the Metrodome. Terry continued to expand his inventory, and when he found that one customer was using one of his brass products as a pet cremation urn, the Terrybear we know and love today was born. 

This forward-thinking company has continued Terry’s tradition of pivoting to meet the ever-evolving needs of customers; somehow, they even provide game-changing solutions to problems their customers haven’t even realized they have.

Take the Infinity Urn Vault, for example. Terrybear’s ingenious Infinity Urn Vault doesn’t just solve one problem — it addresses an incredibly wide range of issues. At only 8.2 pounds, the cylindrical urn vault is much more manageable than its concrete predecessors, yet its glass-infused plastic composition doesn’t compromise on strength and durability. It’s easy to store and even easier to share with families, especially as encouragement or incentive for safe, permanent memorialization. 

2. Their technology is top-tier

Ease of use is a theme that runs through everything Terrybear creates, including their digital experience. Memory of a Lifetime®, Terrybear’s online portal, enables directors to share a customized, branded portfolio of products with anyone, anytime, and anywhere. The portal also incorporates Terrybear’s QuickProofs™ technology to personalize urns and other products quickly, accurately, and beautifully.

“With Memory of a Lifetime®, funeral directors can focus on all the other things they have to focus on,” Nikki Nordeen, Terrybear’s Executive Director of Client Success & Brand Growth shared last year. “They don’t have to worry about one little thing, like getting a proof of a personalized product approved. We have taken that worry off of their plates.”

Terrybear continues to innovate Memory of a Lifetime® and other technological tools as they receive feedback or recognize a need. Since launching the portal in 2019, they’ve added options for tracking orders, displaying product availability, easily-searchable descriptions, funeral home branding and pricing, and a convenient URL that allows families to continue their search or personalization process outside the arrangement room.

“When it comes to technology, there’s never a final destination,” Nordeen says. “It’s just constant, continuous improvement.”

3. Custom solutions are a priority

The QuickProofs™ technology may be relatively new to Terrybear, but the company’s commitment to providing highly-personalized products is anything but. Terrybear has always offered unique products that one simply can’t find anywhere else. However, they’ve also become renowned for their ability to add lovely engravings and other customizations and still deliver the product quickly enough for it to become a centerpiece at a service.

“Personalization turns an urn into a memorial,” Brent Thorson, Manager of Client Success & Growth at Terrybear, said earlier this year. “And it’s a value-add for the funeral home. But I’ve seen so many funeral directors who dread it because of a complicated process. Terrybear’s QuickProofs™ process changes that for them.”

The proliferation of deathcare items on platforms like Etsy and Amazon is an indication that consumers are craving unique and creative options. But unlike those products — which are increasingly offered by unreliable sellers — Terrybear’s products are guaranteed to be of the highest quality and backed by people who honestly want to do things right the first time and everytime. 

4. They love pets, too

Speaking of the folks of Terrybear … They’re also diehard pet people! Pet products have been an integral part of Terrybear literally since the company’s birth (remember that origin story?), and they still make sure that pet families are offered as many options and assurances as every other end-user of their products. From the inclusion of pet cremation products in the Memory of a Lifetime® portal to their outstanding Standard Urn Program, pets, their families, and the professionals who serve them are still a priority.  

“We not only focus on the product, but also on the service that helps our customers save time and grow their business,” said Jeremiah Neville, Terrybear’s Pet Client Solutions Manager. “We talk to them, get to know their business. We talk about what competitive advantages they have, what their local market looks like, and we learn what’s going to be the best product to help them grow.”

Like their products for humans, the majority of Terrybear’s massive selection of pet products, which includes everything from urns to caskets to cremation jewelry, can be personalized using the QuickProofs™ technology.

5. They’re bringing a big surprise to NFDA

Customization, innovation, technology, and pet products are just a portion of Terrybear’s ongoing story. They’ve recently committed to an impressive eco-friendly initiative, with the ambitious goal of eliminating 90% of the landfill waste their packaging and other processes originally produced. It’s a project inspired by the company’s impressive set of core values. The company values compassion, commitment, inspiration, quality, doing the right thing, diverse perspectives, and making a difference — and all of these will be on display in October at the National Funeral Directors Association (NFDA) International Convention & Expo in New Orleans.

In addition, Terrybear has promised to surprise visitors to their NFDA booths with something “exciting” and “interesting” — but that’s about all they’re disclosing about this super-secret project. So be sure to stop by booths 1517 and 1617 when the expo opens on Monday, October 21 and be among the first to learn about Terrybear’s next innovative, problem-solving, and most likely customizable product (or service?)!