Not the Offending Toilet Block. But looks awfully similar
Inspiration they say, can come from anywhere.
Whilst driving, whilst in the shower, driven by adversity or simply from identifying a glaring need.
Reterniti was born from one of those moments, but in this case the main protagonist was a council toilet block.
Reterniti is in the business of afterlife.
Specifically pet afterlife, a solution for a pets ashes once they have passed away.
We create a stone from a pets ashes, a keepsake, a tactile object that one can hold, caress, place and importantly move or take with you.
What most won’t know is what inspired the Reterniti Stone.
It was a misplaced council toilet block.
Hardly glamorous, but an inspiration point nevertheless.
Flash back to Sydney 2013.
Our family dog, Hogan, a beautiful, gentle Golden Retriever had just passed away. He was only 10 years old. Cancer we were told, gets a lot of Retrievers.
My kids and I had taught Hogan to jump up and lay upon a boulder at the local park.
It was his party trick.
He would resolutely stay on that boulder until we were hundreds of metres away at the other end of the park and only move once we whistled, sprinting at top speed to catch us and nearly take our legs out from under us like a speeding bowling ball hitting tenpins.
He loved it, we loved it. It was his thing.
The author, his two sons and Hogans Rock. Sadly no Hogan.
So it made sense for us to scatter Hogan’s ashes (quietly at night time) beneath that rock – which had affectionately become known as Hogan’s Rock. It was a meaningful place for him and for us.
Two years later the kids and I went back to that Sydney park to say hi to Hogan. We missed him and our time playing human tenpins at that park.
Could you imagine our horror when we not only couldn’t find Hogan’s Rock, but saw a shiny new council toilet block had been erected on that exact spot, right over the top of our beloved pooch!?
It was a classic WTF! moment.
I shook my fist to the sky and thought “there has to be a better way”
Damn you toilet block! Damn you dumb bag of ashes.
I wish we could simply retrieve the Retriever and relocate him.
But you can’t do that if the ashes have been scattered; however you could if the ashes were made into a stone . . .
Cue lightbulb moment, a sound of thunder and a nearly religious experience.
The Reterniti Stone was born.
In my head at least. Maybe I’d had a mini seizure?
Either way the idea stuck and the more I spoke of it the more I found the genuine need for and gap in the market for this sort of thing.
Lots of people don’t really know what to do with a pets (or peoples for that matter) ashes.
The problem is the ashes themselves.
I presume we’ve been cremating our loved ones since we were cavemen, yet no-one has really solved for the resultant pile of cremains.
Solve for that pile of ashes and a whole list of opportunities opens up.
After years of prototyping, development dead-ends and sideways glances normally reserved for the mad, we perfected the Reterniti production methodology. It’s not easy, but it’s worth it.
Since then people have been holding their pets Reterniti Stone close. They’ve found new, more modern places to keep their departed pet nearby. Next to their PC screen on their desk; on their bedside table, beside the front door, in their glovebox, under the car seat, in their handbag – wow, we learn of new places every week.
They are all meaningful places, every single one of them entirely correct.
And they can be moved.
And they won’t have a toilet block built over them!
A Reterniti Stone under their favourite tree perhaps?
