Greatroam (归丛), the designer funeral product brand that brings the “new Chinese style” aesthetic to the funeral industry in China, has finally opened its first-ever offline store. However, the location was a little surprising, not in Yunnan or Chengdu as many predicted, but in Sanlitun, Beijing.
An experiential retail space, the Greatroam store is spread across two floors. The ground floor consists of the “Heaven Post Office”, “Heaven Supermarket” and “Emotions Oxygen Pod”. You can write a letter at the post office and put it in a burning tube before mailing it to the departed. You can also shop for everyday items at the supermarket for lost loved ones, following the tradition of burning papier-mâché items and joss paper as offerings to send to the other side. Greatroam also teamed up with lifestyle brand Plain Store for a fragrance collection that blurs the line between mourning and remembrance.
Upstairs, Greatroam has displayed its entire line of products, from urns to funeral attire. There is also a funeral consultancy office called the “Greatroam farewell office” that provides services from funeral planning, life events, and memoir writing for different stages of mortality.
Greatroam, other than its designer aesthetics, is known for breaking the social taboo around death in China. It strives to bring death back to daily life, as something we talk and think about, so we can understand death and, by extension, life. The immersive space, from its fragrance spray for “dispersing bad luck” at the entrance, does make it lighter and easier to discuss topics such as remembrance, grief, the departed and our own mortality.