Batesville Creates Buzz at ICCFA Convention WIth Endura Vault, Service Still in Question

The ICCFA Convention last week in wonderful Las Vegas was highlighted by the big “B” who created the most buzz with their new Endura Burial Vault..

We are use to the normal Batesville booth being full of caskets, this was not the case this year. This year Batesville rolled out their new Endura Burial Vault. The vault looked much like pictures we have seen before. They did display some of the personalization options available.

I strolled through the booth to get a feel for the response from funeral directors in the booth. Surprisingly the chatter was pretty positive.

Batesville also showed a video of the vault being put through different strength tests. Though personally I wouldn’t consider the video to be a true display of the vaults strength, but funeral directors who watched the video seemed to be impressed.

The video showed a 500 pound bolder being dropped on the vault from 9ft high. Batesville was quick to point out that the vault did not “crack”, but the top of the vault did dent in.

They also showed the vault buried with heavy cemetery equipment parked on top of the grave. This was to show that the vault could with stand 22,000 pounds of pressure. I encourage Batesville, if they are completely confident in the product to do a true center load test.

I was impressed with the different personalization options that are available for the top of the vault. The personalization was clean and flowed with the ridges on the vault top. I was also very impressed with the design of the vault. Batesville made some very appealing changes to the look of the vault and I am told these changes also enhance the performance of the product as well.

I think the biggest obstacle left for Batesville to figure out is how they are going to get the vault serviced. In a conversation I had with 2 Batesville representatives they admittedly said Batesville has distribution and quality figured out but service was were there were still questions. This is understandable delivering a burial vault is completely different then delivering a casket, and I really don’t think there are too many funeral directors who want to service their own vaults (this is a service option Batesville is kicking around).

Below are a few pictures of the Batesville booth that were emailed to me.