Caskets ship within 48 hours. Federal law requires funeral homes to accept third-party caskets.
The caskets come from Star Legacy Funeral Network Inc., a company based in McHenry, Ill., that sells the same caskets for about the same price on its site, along with many others.
Star Legacy chief executive Rick Obadiah said the response in the first week has been better than the company or Wal-Mart expected, though he declined to give specifics. A spokesman for Walmart.com also declined to release sales figures and downplayed the venture.
“Several online retailers offer this category on their sites,’’ spokesman Ravi Jariwala wrote in an e-mail. “We are simply conducting a limited beta test to understand customer response.’’
But Obadiah said it is not simply a test. He said more than 200 Star Legacy products, including pet urns and memorial jewelry and eventually about two dozen caskets, will be sold at Walmart.com. The company also supplies similar types of products to online retailer Overstock.com and urns to Costco’s website.
Walmart.com is allowing people to pay for the caskets over a period of 12 months for no interest.
The move gives more power to consumers and helps them avoid high mark-ups on caskets, which can often be several hundred percent, said R. Brian Burkhardt, a funeral director who blogs as “Your Funeral Guy.’’
The industry is not too concerned about Wal-Mart entering the market, said Pat Lynch, president-elect of the National Funeral Home Directors Association. Consumers have been able to buy caskets online and from other sources for years, with minimal effect on the business, he said.
