Strategy May 18, 2026
Trend Watch: The Growing Niche of Funeral Merch
A shift toward celebrations of life, along with longstanding traditions like remembrance T-shirts, is helping families honor loved ones in more personal ways.
Key Takeaways
• Many funeral services are shifting from traditional ceremonies to more personalized celebration of life experiences, complete with small personalized keepsakes.
• Remembrance T-shirts remain a longstanding cultural tradition, giving family and friends a wearable way to honor loved ones and celebrate their memory together.
Consistent with its name, beverage brand Liquid Death has been known to dabble in stunt merchandise themed around the afterlife. Its collaboration with Spotify, a Bluetooth-connected urn that claims to use Spotify listening history to create a post-life playlist is just one recent example.
A music-playing urn was clearly designed to generate headlines. But underneath it, there’s a very real phenomenon to be discovered. Funeral merch – or, perhaps more accurately, celebration of life merchandise – is a thriving niche market within promo.
Noel Garcia, managing director at Counselor Top 40 distributor Boundless (asi/143717), has worked primarily with funeral homes for nearly his entire promo career. Initially, that meant products such as branded tissues, pens or mint tins. However, he’s noted a shift, particularly since the pandemic.
“Some families are getting away from more-traditional funerals,” Garcia says, “and doing things that are more of a celebration of life.”
Research from the National Funeral Directors Association indicates that American families are increasingly choosing cremation over traditional burial. Nearly two-thirds of deaths (63%) now result in cremation – a figure projected to rise to 82% by 2045.
Remembrance T-shirts featuring the name and images of the deceased are common practice at celebrations of life in many communities.
On a practical level, that means many of Garcia’s clients have shifted their interior design away from a casket-funeral setup. For Garcia, it means providing display options for more pictures or personal items of the deceased, as well as professional, cohesive packaging and bags for transporting those items. And, often, it’s also translated into small giveaway items at the funeral service itself, such as a customized fishing lure or golf ball honoring the deceased’s favorite activities.
This practice is longstanding in some areas, especially with memorial T-shirts. It’s particularly common in Black culture and the Miami community, for instance, to have T-shirts made for family and close friends, shares Cali Hamilton, longtime social media brand ambassador at Florida-based All Day Shirts (asi/45492), a blank-apparel supplier that has seen significant business in this area.
“Nobody wants to be sad at the funeral,” says Hamilton, who’s also known as “Mama Dukes” on the All Day Shirts socials. “After church is over and you take off your church clothes, you get comfortable – and what you do is you put on a remembrance T-shirt.”
All Day Shirts (asi/45492) recently printed a variety of remembrance T-shirts in honor of the birthday of a Miami-based rapper who passed away in 2024.
There’s not one typical design for these shirts, says Hamilton, who has created and printed designs for memorial items for years. Ultimately, they’re a tribute to the deceased, so it’s important for the design to reflect who they were.
“It’s not just a corporate graphic,” says Brian Roberts, who co-founded All Day Shirts along with his brother Scott. “The celebration of life is really living on that shirt.”
Speed is often essential when it comes to ensuring remembrance T-shirts arrive in time for an event, Roberts says. Advances like direct-to-film graphics have made the process easier, particularly when it comes to quickly producing high-quality photo prints in small quantities. The shirt design often includes a picture of the person at a happy point in their life, and there could be a few variations visible after the service. The deceased’s siblings may be featured in one color or design, for example, and their children or close friends in another.
The common thread is that these items are a way to keep a loved one’s memory alive, even after the service. Hamilton says the remembrance items are often brought out to celebrate the deceased’s birthday, or if the group gets together to remember the person on the anniversary of their passing. It adds a little light to what could otherwise be a very dark day, she adds.
“It’s a different spin on togetherness, family, love,” says Hamilton, “kind of like how a family reunion feels.”