Happy Birthday, Solace

by Keith Crawford & David Odusanya | Apr 15, 2020

Admittedly, this is a strange time to have a birthday. People are getting creative with Zoom, leaving cakes on porches and holding drive-by birthday parties. As one nurse practitioner told the New York Times, “Celebrations are really, truly just about love.”

Love is one of the things that inspired us to create Solace. We’d both had our own bad experiences with the funeral industry as we cared for our own loved ones. We thought there had to be a better way. As designers — and simply as human beings — we wanted to create something new, something that would give families more time together with less time wasted making arrangements.

So, though we cannot hug or raise a glass together, we are celebrating this week, not because of our own egos, but because we are proud to serve the community with compassion and humility. We thank our amazing Care Team and staff for helping us achieve so much. And, we have a lot to be proud of as we reach our first anniversary on April 15.

• We invested in offsets to make every cremation carbon neutral.
• We received 5 star ratings from more than 20 families.
• In March, we served more families than ever before.
• In our first quarter of this year, we served 40 percent more families than the previous quarter.
• Also during that time, we averaged over 1,000 new visitors weekly to our website, solacecares.com, allowing us to provide a resource to current and future families around the world.

We designed our business to be digital, and though we never saw the current crisis coming, that has helped us be a safer choice, too. We feel both lucky, and grateful, that we remain open to serve the community at this unprecedented time.

As April 15, 2020, rolls around, we hope you’ll join us in celebrating our business, one that cares for the environment, for families, for our community. As we try and change an antiquated industry, we look forward to serving more families in the years to come.

Though we cannot be together with our team and our partners for cake or champagne, this year has been so rewarding for us. We’ve taken what was an idea and made it a reality, and that is the greatest gift we could ever receive.

Photo by Jason Leung