Australia’s largest operator of funeral homes, InvoCare, will be closing its small United States funeral  business that it began in 2015 according to an article in the Australian Financial Review Weekend.  The company’s American funeral business is headquartered in Los Angeles and used a business model where it relied on digital advertisers to lead client families to their business which was operated with mobile funeral arrangers.

According to the article, InvoCare has invested about $6 million ($US) as of now and had a limit of investing only $8 million ($US) before making a decision.  Their orderly shutdown is expected to be completed by mid-2018.

InvoCare will continue to operate in the death care business in the United States by staying in the cremation market where they have purchased the Macera Crematory of Los Angeles for $2 million ($US).

InvoCare, an Australian public company,  has an approximately 33% share of the Australian death care market and operates under several different name brands on the continent.

Funeral Director Daily take:  Mobile funeral directors or what we called “the man in the van” technique has worked in some U.S. cities.  It has generally been driven (no pun intended) by word of mouth advertising and not on a social media digital platform.  I firmly believe that in today’s social media world that this type of business – where there is not a brick and mortar funeral home – can work by driving costs down.  The people that figure out how to effectively acquire customers, for the mobile arranger,  at a reasonable cost will profit handsomely.  [wpforms id=”436″ title=”true” description=”true”]