3 Teak furniture maker finds niche in stone.

A North Bay home decor and handicraft exporting company is turning over a new stone.

Well known in Ontario for their show-stopping teak root furniture and carvings, Vested Interest Trading, a division of Buckstone Inc., is poised to launch a new product line making granite and rock urns for human and pet remains.

The 25-person company has created two new spinoff divisions, Petra Natural Stone Keepsake Urns for the pet market, and Soul Stones for cremated human remains, better known in the industry vernacular as cremains.

Former street vendor and now company president and co-founder Jennifer McNutt Bywater admits entering the funeral supply market is a radical departure from their usual line of imported Indonesian home decor items and Northern Ontario-made handicrafts.

"It's a completely different industry," says Jennifer, whose husband and co-founder Brent Bywater was heading to Seattle in mid-March to the International Association of Pet Cemeteries and Crematoriums annual conference.

But it's a huge industry with "amazing" market potential.

After being approached by a local funeral director, they discovered there was a sector need for a product that was "natural, beautiful and discreet. So Brent and I decided to take it to the next level."

After a year's worth of market research, the Bywater's discovered there wasn't any company making rock urns for cremains. Jennifer says the spinoff companies are a "natural progression" from some of the crafts they produce at one of their divisions, Rock Solid Creations.

Buckstone Inc. is comprised of three subsidiaries, Vested Interest Trading, its original export-importing and craft division; Uprooted Designs, their Indonesian reclaimed teak root furniture and craft business; and Rock Solid Creations, which crafts and distributes stone ornaments, giftware and garden pieces from Canadian Shield rock.

The new venture is expected to create four new jobs with likely many more to follow, says Jennifer.

Each six to ten-inch urn comes from hand-selected granite or Canadian Shield glacial rock. Some machining work is done at their nearby Callander shop to create a flat bottom and hollow out a sealed cavity to hold the remains, but "Mother Nature has designed them, essentially."

They are shaped into various styles decorated with tea lights, hurricane lamps and oil winks with a shaved surface to mount a plaque, etching or photo abrasion.

McNutt says cremations for humans and pet are becoming more popular than ever in North America.

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Depending upon individual choices, people will either bury or scatter the deceased person's ashes but some may keep a small portion as a keepsake. Besides serving as a memorial receptacle, the urns can also be a treasured memento or time capsule containing a lock of hair, photograph or poem.

"That's where our rock urns become very sought after," says Jennifer. "Often people are interested in keeping some of those remains, but the beauty of these pieces is they can sit on a mantle, dining room or coffee table and no one needs to know it's housing the cremains of a loved one.

"It's just a beautiful lamp, tea light or rock in your garden."

More pets than people?

But is the market bigger for deceased pets than for people?

Jennifer says they'll find out this spring when they attend their first funeral directors trade show, the Canadian Funeral Trade Association, in Quebec City this June where they'll be officially launching Soul Stone.

After unveiling their product at two pet industry trade shows, including the Ontario Veterinary Medical Association last month, she says the response has been "beyond what we could have possibly expected."

McNutt says people were attracted to the product's natural beauty and discreetness.

Later this month, Buckstone Inc. will receive a regional Global Traders Award in North Bay. The company is among 20 exporters from Northern Ontario receiving awards in six categories.

They are sharing the award with their Indonesian shipping agent Purnama Cargo of Payagnang, Bali.

Years before while touring Bali, Jennifer met Wayan Rarem who ran a small box-and-crate shipping business. The couple loaned his company money to purchase property and eventually helped build a 20,000-square-foot warehouse-workshop complex where the teak root furnishings are made.

Last year, the company shipped 23 full containers of Indonesian crafts to their showroom outlet in downtown North Bay and to seven distributors, include one in Vancouver and six in the U.S. Their product now reaches 2,000 stores across North America. A new division, Lightning Cycle, has been launched which sources manufacturers of after-market motorcycle and ATV parts in Asia.

Though reluctant to disclose sales figures, the Bywater's say the company's sales have increased 10 to 20 per cent each year for the last three years. Their container shipment volume is up 50 per cent to date in 2006.

"Every year has just been constant growth since we've begun and every year I think it seriously couldn't get any busier than it already is," says Jennifer. "And every year we get better at what we do."

www.petraurns.com

www.soulstoneurns.com

www.vestedinterest.ca

www.buckstone.ca

By IAN ROSS 

Northern Ontario Business 

QUICK FACTS

Buckstone Inc. was founded in 1993 by Jennifer McNutt Bywater and Brent Bywater in North Bay. The couple is now selling stonework urns for the remains of people and pets.