Good Reasons

One exceptional aspect of the adieu business model is that you don’t just have the choice between standard and express shipping; you can also decide how quickly your item will be manufactured. There are three options available in our shop: standard, premium, and express. Depending on how urgent your order is, and when the funeral is taking place, you can decide which option works best for you. Premium and express orders are processed immediately after they have been placed, so that the personalized headstone can arrive in time for the funeral. We are always working on optimizing our processes, in particular in order to meet varied cultural needs.

adieu is committed to carbon neutral delivery. We know that every company is responsible for CO2 emissions, and therefore do our best to minimize the ones we are responsible for, or avoid them entirely if possible. We use the environmental protection program GoGreen, available from our shipping provider DHL, to make a sustainable contribution to preventing climate change.

We do more than just make sure our items are shipped with a carbon neutral service. adieu ensures that all company processes are as ecological and environmentally friendly as possible. The headstones themselves are made of larch wood – one of the fastest growing renewable raw materials available – and are handcrafted by a local carpenter. This keeps delivery routes short, saving resources, and facilitates communication. We process the wooden headstones using water-based latex print technology that has been awarded the Greenguard GOLD certification and the Energy-Star label for energy efficiency. The system has also been awarded the epeat Bronze certificate. This certificate monitors 23 different criteria, such as reduction of toxic materials used to produce the device, energy consumption, and how recyclable it is.

We also do our best to reduce the use of paper when communicating with our customers. The majority of communication takes place online. We do not use high gloss materials or plastic to package our products.

adieu believes that integration can only take place when the whole community is involved. Only once every single person is committed to integration can we truly live in harmony with one another. Unfortunately, there are many aspects of daily life that prevent total integration, including aspects of the funeral industry. adieu’s online shop for customizable headstones helps with integration. It takes into account the growing cultural diversity in Germany, the fact that there are now many alternative lifestyles requiring alternative mourning options, and the changes in consumer behavior driven by digitalization. Social responsibility is important to us, but we also take our responsibility to environmental protection very seriously.

adieu’s wooden headstones are lovingly handcrafted in cooperation with a traditional carpenter’s workshop. We worked hard to develop a high-quality yet affordable product. Our team consists of specialists in woodworking, varnishing, graphic design, media design, and UX design. Our range of expertise allows us to offer customers a well designed and reliable product. Our goal is to create a stylish memorial that honors the dearly departed.

We also keep in close contact with cemeteries, administrators, mourners, and clergy from a variety of religions. This helps us stay up to date when it comes to issues surrounding funerals in an intercultural context.

All manufacturing and sales processes related to our wooden headstones, such as development, manufacture, and design take place in Germany. This is reflected in the excellent quality items we produce. Only the raw materials are imported, because they are not easily available from within Germany. We chose to use Siberian larch wood because it has natural characteristics that are optimal for the manufacture of our headstones. Not only that, Siberia and Russia have some of the most densely forested areas on our planet. They have the largest timber reserves on earth, with nearly 8 million square kilometers of woodland. That’s almost 23 times the size of Germany. The wood is processed by a local carpentry workshop and all further processing is done by our team.

We mainly work with local partners to produce our wooden headstones. Partnering with local businesses helps adieu to make Wilhelmshaven economically more attractive. Not only that, the company is committed to creating new jobs with fair working conditions. When we decided to start a company selling personalized headstones, our primary goal was not economic success, but social responsibility.

If we want to achieve our goal of contributing significantly to integration, then we have to take cultural diversity into account. adieu came to be because we wanted to consider and honor our experiences and insights into different traditions and mourning customs. By offering a variety of design options, we allow customers to choose a headstone that suits the person they are mourning. They can select a shape, decide on an inscription, and add symbols that reflect the personality of their dearly departed loved one. A picture is worth thousand words, and in light of that, we also make it possible to add images to the headstones. We are constantly working to expand the configuration options in order to provide a worthy memorial for every single person.

Implementing our vision of responsibility and cultural diversity requires that we be multilingual. In times of mourning we want to provide as much support and relief as possible. Making sure the website is available in the mourner’s native language helps them to navigate our offer and understand who we are and what we do. Our goal is to continue to add languages to our website so that as many people as possible can access our services.