BUY NOW, DIE LATER\Coffin seller takes dig at prices of funerals with low-cost caskets.

Byline: Gregory J. Wilcox Daily News Staff Writer

Mardi Frank wants consumers to take deep discounting to their graves.

Her new company's name, Direct Casket, sums up her product line and business strategy. Frank sells 40 styles of caskets directly to consumers - slashing prices typically charged by funeral homes.

"My interest is for the consumers. This is a healthy concept," Frank said Thursday.

Not in the market for a casket right now? Buy one anyway and Frank says she'll store it free of charge until the unfortunate day it's needed.

Customers will get an ownership certificate and will have to take possession of the casket if Direct Casket ever goes out of business, Frank said.

Direct Casket's prices range from $225 for a plain wooden coffin covered in cloth to $3,395 for the top-of-the line solid bronze model. In contrast, funeral home prices can start at $325 and exceed $10,000, according to a spot check of industry executives.

A funeral director with 10 years' experience, Frank said she wants to give consumers a break on the high cost of dying and make money at the same time. Services typically start at about $600 for cremation and can run to $10,000.

"I sell caskets at a fair price," Frank said. "And I make plenty of profit on what I do. I've got to tell you that this is my brass ring and and I'm going to go for the whole merry-go-round."

She operates out of a new brick building in Van Nuys. One room is a sparsely furnished office and showroom with eight caskets on display. Across the hall in a crowded storeroom not much bigger than an average-size office, 35 other plastic-wrapped caskets are stacked on end.

Frank, Direct Casket's president, started the company with $500,000 investment from a group of investors.

In addition to drawing on her experience as a funeral director, Frank hired an advertising agency and media coach to help polish her pitch. She spent most of Thursday doing television, radio and newspaper interviews.

She hopes to carve out a niche in the funeral business by taking advantage of a Federal Trade Commission regulation that prohibits funeral homes or mortuaries from charging consumers a handling fee for caskets purchased elsewhere.

It took effect last January and is a modification to the federal funeral rule enacted in 1984. That rule basically prevented funeral homes from bundling services such as requiring that customers buy complete funeral packages, including flowers and caskets.

But many funeral homes started charging stiff fees to handle caskets purchased elsewhere, said Eileen Harrington, the commission's assistant director for marketing practices.

"The casket handling fee was one of the new problems that arose. It was sort of a loophole," she said.

Michael Kubasak, president of the Valley Funeral Home in Burbank, said he did not charge the handling fee and didn't think most other California funeral homes did either.

"Ideas like this are not new. Funeral homes have always been open to people either making their own casket or buying the casket someplace else," he said.

Nor is Frank's company the first to compete with local funeral homes for consumers casket business.

"One of the casket companies opened up two years right across the street from Forest Lawn Cypress and they were out of business in six months," said Paul Gelb, vice president of Forest Lawn Memorial-Park, which operates five funeral facilities in the Los Angeles area.

And even though Frank's prices are below retail, one consumer group thinks she's a profiteer.

"I'll believe it when I see it," scoffed John Blake, executive director of the Funeral and Memorial Societies of America, a consumer advocacy group in Egg Harbor, Wis. "Everything about funerals is priced too high."

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Photo (Color) Marti Frank of Direct Casket hopes to challenge fees charged at funeral homes with her low-price burial vessels. Tom Mendoza/Daily News