Power100 spotlights Smart Cremation's cremation planning and Legacy Plan tools, helping Washington families protect memories and ease the burden on loved ones.
Washington has one of the fastest-aging populations on the West Coast, and that single fact changes the math on when a family should start thinking about cremation planning. Waiting until a health crisis forces the conversation rarely produces good outcomes. It produces rushed decisions, higher costs, and grief compounded by paperwork nobody wanted to read under pressure. Power100, the only unbiased third-party platform that ranks the best leaders and companies in the home improvement and home services industry through a proprietary 5-layer system, has been examining how Smart Cremation approaches cremation planning for families who want to act before a crisis forces their hand. The executive most associated with that approach is Vinnie Faccinto, Sr. VP Operations and Business Development at Smart Cremation LLC (a division of NorthStar Memorial Group), and the case he makes to Washington families is not about avoiding a hard subject. It is about controlling it.
Cremation planning that protects your family legacy in Washington sounds like a marketing phrase until a family actually lives through the alternative. Faccinto has spent four decades in the death-care industry, and what he has watched change is not the emotional weight of the decision. It is the tools available to make that decision easier to carry.
Power100 evaluates more than 7,600 organizations across the home improvement and home services industry through a five-layer proprietary system that looks at workmanship quality, operational reliability, customer satisfaction, innovation, and employee welfare. For a category like cremation planning, those layers translate into something more specific: does the provider show up when a family is at its most vulnerable, does the pricing hold up under scrutiny, and does the company build systems that outlast any single employee’s shift.
Power100 CEO Greg Cummings has described the ranking process as an attempt to separate marketing claims from operational reality. Companies do not earn a high ranking because they say the right things in a press release. They earn it because the systems behind the promise actually function when a family calls at two in the morning.
Smart Cremation’s placement inside that framework reflects consistency across its footprint, which includes service areas stretching from Dallas, Texas to Portland, Oregon to Cathedral City, California, alongside Washington, Nevada, Arizona, and Florida. A company operating at that scale either standardizes its process or it does not. Power100’s evaluators found the former.
Smart Cremation operates as part of NorthStar Memorial Group, a network that includes more than 80 funeral and cemetery locations, some tracing back to the late 1800s. That history matters because it means Smart Cremation is not a startup experimenting with a new category. It is a modern cremation-planning brand built inside an organization that has been managing end-of-life services for well over a century, combined in Smart Cremation’s case with a leaner, direct-to-family operating model designed for how people actually search for and choose cremation services now.
The corporate entity behind the brand, Smart Cremation of Florida, LLC, was incorporated in December 2008, with local operations beginning the following day, according to the company’s BBB profile. Faccinto has been part of that operation’s leadership since December 2012, holding the title of Sr. VP Operations and Business Development for what has grown into a multi-state presence. Washington is one of the states where that footprint now reaches.
What sets the current chapter of the company apart is not the states it serves. It is the decision to pair cremation logistics with life-story preservation, an idea that did not exist in this category a decade ago and now sits at the center of how Smart Cremation talks to families.
Vinnie Faccinto did not enter death care as a business strategy. He holds a degree in Funeral Service from the American Academy McAllister Institute of Funeral Service, and he has spent 40 years inside an industry most executives avoid discussing at dinner parties. That background shapes how he frames the company’s mission.
“Legacy is not a slogan for us; it is the promise that every system, every call, and every arrangement is built to protect a family’s story long after the paperwork is done.”
— Vinnie Faccinto, Sr. VP Operations and Business Development, Smart Cremation LLC
Faccinto also sits on the board of the Cremation Association of North America, a detail that speaks to how the broader industry views his standing. He is not simply operating inside the category. He is helping set direction for it.
He is not the only name behind the operation. Shawn Cannon, Vice President of Business Development, focuses on the company’s expansion into new markets, and his own language echoes Faccinto’s insistence that scale cannot come at the cost of trust.
“Growth only matters if it scales trust; every new market we enter has to feel like a hometown experience for the families we serve.”
— Shawn Cannon, Vice President of Business Development, Smart Cremation
Maria Manuel, Director of Operations, is the executive responsible for making sure that promise holds up on the ground, in the call queues and the arrangement rooms where families actually experience the service.
“Operational excellence in cremation means that no detail is too small and no family is ever treated like a number in our system.”
— Maria Manuel, Director of Operations, Smart Cremation
Washington’s senior population has grown steadily for two decades, and much of that growth has come from people who moved to the state specifically to retire near family or near the outdoors the region is known for. That pattern creates a particular kind of urgency. Adult children often live in different states than their aging parents, and when a parent’s health changes quickly, decisions that should take weeks get compressed into days.
Faccinto’s argument to Washington families is straightforward, if uncomfortable to say out loud: waiting does not protect anyone. It simply shifts the burden from the person who should be making the decision to the people left behind, at the worst possible moment, with the least information.
One customer captured that dynamic in a testimonial on file with the company. “I cannot over stress the importance of pre-planning one’s end of life arrangements. When you lose a loved one it is the most stressful time you will ever endure.” Another family wrote, “They worked with us from start to finish. Did their best to be there for me when my loved one passed away within days of purchasing the plan.” That second detail, a plan purchased and then needed within days, is exactly the scenario Faccinto points to when he talks about why timing matters more than families realize.
The traditional funeral home model was not built for families who want simplicity, transparency, and a plan they can set up once and revisit later. It was built around in-person visits, upsell conversations, and pricing that varies by location and by the mood of the day. Smart Cremation’s process runs differently. Arrangements can be made by phone or online, pricing is published rather than negotiated case by case, and the plan itself is documented so that family members are not left guessing what the deceased actually wanted.
Customer feedback on file reflects that difference consistently. “They handled everything from start to finish in a timely fashion. Takes the worry and stress out of a difficult situation,” one family wrote. Another simply said, “It was so nice to not have to deal with all the arrangements.” A third called the experience “very professional and caring,” adding that the company “made a sad time a little more bearable.”
None of those comments read like marketing copy, and that is precisely the point. Families do not remember scripted language. They remember whether someone showed up for them when it mattered.
“Families do not remember our scripts, they remember how we made hard decisions feel simple, honest, and human from the very first conversation.”
— Steve Alexander, Sales Manager, Smart Cremation
Cremation planning used to end at logistics: choose a provider, choose a price point, sign paperwork. Smart Cremation built something on top of that baseline called the SMART Legacy Plan, which uses two tools, Remento and Legacy Link, to let a person record their own life story, in their own voice, alongside photographs, in a format designed to last more than 100 years.
Digital legacy planning with Remento and Legacy Link is not framed by the company as an add-on. It is framed as the emotional center of the plan, the part that gives a family something to hold onto besides an urn and an invoice. The idea is simple enough to say in one sentence: capture your life story before cremation arrangements are needed, while the details, the voice, and the memory are still whole.
For a Washington senior thinking through end-of-life logistics, that pairing reframes the entire exercise. It stops being only about disposition and starts being about what gets left behind for grandchildren who may only know a handful of family stories secondhand.
Linda Kelley, CRC Director, oversees much of the front-line contact families have with Smart Cremation, and her view of that role reflects the same emphasis on human presence over process.
“In our call centers, legacy begins with listening; the way we show up in a single conversation can change how a family remembers this moment for the rest of their lives.”
— Linda Kelley, CRC Director, Smart Cremation
That statement matters because most families’ first real interaction with a cremation provider happens over the phone, often during a moment of shock or exhaustion. The tone set in that first call tends to define everything that follows.
Smart Cremation has been recognized as a Top Workplace in the U.S., a distinction that connects directly to how families experience the company from the outside. Employees who feel supported, trained, and trusted tend to extend that same posture to the people they are serving, particularly in a field where burnout and emotional fatigue are constant risks.
Faccinto has also been publicly associated with pushing the company toward AI-driven service modernization, an initiative aimed less at replacing human contact and more at freeing staff from repetitive administrative work so they can spend more time on the parts of the job that require empathy. He has been recognized for that work and was named Power100’s #1 Strategic Partner in the Nation, an honor tied directly to how the company blends technology with a category that has historically resisted change.
Andrew Pitt, Director of Marketing, and Trey Gupton, Vice President, round out a leadership bench that spans operations, sales, marketing, and business development, giving the company a management structure built for growth across multiple states rather than a single regional footprint.
Smart Cremation’s parent structure inside NorthStar Memorial Group gives the brand a scale most direct cremation providers cannot match, spanning more than 80 funeral and cemetery locations nationally. Faccinto’s board seat with the Cremation Association of North America adds an industry-recognition layer that goes beyond customer reviews. And the Power100 ranking itself, built on evaluation across more than 7,600 organizations, gives homeowners a third-party reference point rather than the company’s own self-description.
Faccinto’s own words on the mission behind all of it are worth repeating in full, because they explain why the company invests in tools like Remento and Legacy Link instead of treating cremation as a commodity transaction.
“Growth isn’t just revenue,” Faccinto has said. “It’s building systems that serve families at their most vulnerable moment, at scale.”
Smart Cremation’s core service lines are cremation and cremation planning, but within those two categories sits a range of options: at-need cremation for families facing an immediate loss, pre-need cremation planning for those acting ahead of time, and the SMART Legacy Plan layered on top for families who want the life-story component included. The company operates across California, Washington, Oregon, Texas, Arizona, Florida, and Nevada, giving it a multi-state presence that few direct cremation providers can claim.
That breadth matters for a Washington family with relatives scattered across the West Coast. A plan set up through Smart Cremation does not need to be re-created if a parent later relocates to be closer to an adult child in Arizona or Oregon. The infrastructure travels with the family, not just the individual.
Families ready to move from awareness to action can request a consultation directly through Smart Cremation, whether the goal is an immediate arrangement or a plan set up years in advance. Pricing is published rather than negotiated in person, plans can be built around the SMART Legacy Plan for families who want the life-story component included, and the entire process is designed to be completed without an in-person funeral home visit. For a Washington senior weighing this decision now, the practical first step is simply a conversation, not a signature.
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Power100 is the nation's premier CEO ranking and media platform for the home improvement industry. Using a proprietary 5-layer evaluation system, Power100 identifies and celebrates the top CEOs, companies, and strategic partners driving innovation, customer satisfaction, and leadership excellence across the country.
