Funeral Director Daily

Federal Trade Commission apparently set to revise “Funeral Rule”

By Funeral Director Daily / November 8, 2022 /

I’ve worked almost my entire career under the Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) “Funeral Rule”.  The rule, for all practical purposes, required me to introduce “price” into the conversation whenever someone either called the funeral home or walked into the funeral home and asked about funeral, cremation, or memorial services.  It also required me to hand…

StoneMor completes merger with Axar Capital. . . becomes a private company

By Funeral Director Daily / November 7, 2022 /

Last week death care property owner and operator StoneMor announced, in this press release, that they had completed their merger with Axar Capital Management whereby StoneMor will become a private and wholly owned subsidiary of Axar Capital Management.  Prior to this “take private” movement, which was announced in this May 25, 2022, press release, Axar…

Titan Casket scores positive PR from Taylor Swift video

By Funeral Director Daily / November 4, 2022 /

The streets of Death Care and the avenues of Entertainment don’t seem to collide too often at an intersection.  But every once in a while they do and when they do it generally leads to some publicity.  According to this article from Bloomberg that intersection just happened with a highly performing music video by artist…

SCI reports 3Q revenue decline. . .CEO Ryan “These results significantly exceeded our expectations”

By Funeral Director Daily / November 4, 2022 /

North America’s largest business in the death care industry, Service Corporation International (SCI) reported their 3rd Quarter 2022 financial results earlier this week.  The results show a decline of about 5.5% in total revenues for the quarter as compared to the same quarter of 2021.  The 3Q 2022 revenue number was $977.7 million as compared…

Reflections by Duey . . .a product differentiator for your funeral home

By Funeral Director Daily / November 3, 2022 /

It was in June 1980 when I was a rookie funeral director that a gentleman stepped into our funeral home and we were introduced for the first time.  The gentleman was another young funeral director who had left the world of funeral directing to become a representative of one of the major casket companies. That…

Foundation Partners Group purchases Solace. . . extends Direct-to-Consumer digital cremation services

By Funeral Director Daily / November 3, 2022 /

In this press release from PR Newswire you can read about Orlando based Foundation Partners Group and its acquisition of Solace Cremation, the Portland, Oregon, based direct-to-consumer cremation services business.  Solace operates in the Oregon, California, and Florida markets at this time.  The purchase will allow, according to the release, Foundation Partners Group to have geographic…

Watching the Budget: Health Care costs

By Funeral Director Daily / November 2, 2022 /

It’s November and if you haven’t organized your budget for the 2023 calendar year yet, it is about time to get started.  I always did my final work on the budget when November 1 came around and by the 15th of the month it was set for the coming year. I found the easiest way…

History and Introspection: Cemeteries and the Funeral Director

By Funeral Director Daily / November 1, 2022 /

From time to time I either come across unique stories about the death care business or the readers of Funeral Director Daily send them to me.  I find a lot of these stories fascinating and very much worth spending time learning about, especially if I want to be the “Death Care” expert in my community.…

Carriage Services acquires North Carolina funeral homes and cemetery

By Funeral Director Daily / November 1, 2022 /

It was announced last week in this press release that Carriage Services, headquartered in Houston, Texas, acquired substantially all of the assets of the Heritage Funeral and Cremation Services and Forest Lawn East Cemetery.  The businesses are located in the Charlotte, North Carolina, market territory and consist of three stand alone funeral homes, a cemetery,…

Want to build your brand? Try sponsoring a Death Cafe

By Funeral Director Daily / October 31, 2022 /

I visited Baltimore and attended the National Funeral Directors Association (NFDA) convention earlier this month.  In earlier blog posts I’ve told you some overriding impressions that I had from that experience. . . and I told you I would be bringing you, in greater detail, some of my thoughts and observations. One of the phenomena…