Entrepreneur Story Time: Parting Stone

I couldn’t be more excited than to have Justin Crowe, founder of Parting Stone https://partingstone.com, share his story with us at The (finally-opened) Alley as part of Global Entrepreneurship Week (GEW) 2019. Justin catapulted from being the 2018 top bizMIX winner to just one year later closing $500K in funding and publicly launching in late September 2019. Justin credits bizMIX for super-helpful publicity as well as connecting him to the company’s lead investor, who introduced him to many more people. Parting Stone has already opened a processing lab here in Santa Fe and hired four employees (and are looking to hire more).

So what does Parting Stone do? Well, they created an alternative to receiving ashes after a loved one dies that you can easily touch, hold and share among loved ones, an idea Justin gave birth to after the death of his granddad. How’d they do it? Well, Justin had a concept about how to convert the full amount of a person's ashes to stones, but didn’t have a complete recipe. He was grateful to have the NMSBA https://www.nmsbaprogram.org pair him with ceramic engineer Chris Chen of LANL. Working with Chen and his team, they developed a process to superheat cremated remains, chemically altering the ashes into beautiful stones. In addition to pairing Justin with an incredible scientific team at LANL, NMSBA recently awarded Parting Stone a second grant for $100K to study the environmental impact of scattering solidified remains vs. ashes. Pretty cool stuff.

Wondering how it works from the customer side? The gist is that once the Parting Stone lab receives the ashes the entire process takes about three weeks to complete with a 100-lb person producing around 25 stones. They also solidify the remains of family pets and have partnered with the Santa Fe Animal Shelter https://sfhumanesociety.org/purifiedremains/ to offer this option for our furry friends. The service costs $595 for human remains, $395 for dogs and $295 for cats. Parting Stone’s https://partingstone.com website and this industry newsletter article https://connectingdirectors.com/55281-solidified-remains explain much more about the company’s service, process and impact and include some superbly done videos that made me cry (not kidding). They’re well worth watching.

And speaking of watching, I’ve been watching the news since spring of 2018 in anticipation of The Alley’s https://thealleysantafe.com opening, which finally happened on September 2nd. The city’s 1st bowling alley since 2008 spans 20K-sq-ft and comes complete with 12 regulation bowling lanes, six billiard tables, three darts boards, two indoor turf courts for bocce, two shuffleboard tables and a kick-ass arcade. Santa Fe residents and parents Joey and Hannah Padilla (also owners of Santa Fe Tails) bring a spirit of family with them to work each day and love watching kids big and small having fun in their sprawling entertainment center.

Bring your appetite, as they’ve partnered with Executive Chef Ever Paz and his wife Anna to bring El Sabor https://thealleysantafe.com/food/ (formerly a food truck) to The Alley’s kitchen, where they serve up a range of excellent quality tapas, salads, sandwiches, burgers and entrées. Yummmm. And the Bocce Bar https://thealleysantafe.com/drinks/ offers local beers on tap, popular wines and signature cocktails using liquors from local distilleries. Arrive on time to grab a drink and a bite to enjoy during story time and I can’t wait to see you there!