Funeral Director Daily

Trouble in Michigan Pet Cemetery

By Funeral Director Daily / January 11, 2019 /

In the 1970s the Heavenly Acres Pet Cemetery in Livingston County, Michigan, began selling burial lots, monuments, and markers, as well as interring deceased pets for clients.  Along with these charges, the cemetery collected fees for what was purposed to be perpetual care of the cemeteries. The cemetery has had some ups and downs since…

Know your vendors. . . an update. . . .perspective

By Funeral Director Daily / January 10, 2019 /

Today I was looking through some ideas and came upon three subjects that, while not all open for in-depth stories and opinions, I thought were interesting enough in their own right to just mention and let you take a look yourself if you wanted to delve deeper into the subject matter. The first item that…

Thinking outside the box

By Funeral Director Daily / January 9, 2019 /

Sometimes what seems like the obvious isn’t always the best.  Yesterday we wrote about trying to bring the volume of your services number to a larger number and how that could help by reducing your costs per service.  One way we suggested doing that was by an acquisition in the same geographic area of your…

Working towards an acquistion

By Funeral Director Daily / January 8, 2019 /

A really nice article about Leo and Jeff Marshall, the father/son team that has owned and operated the Marshall Funeral Home in Greenville, Michigan since 1967 was published in the Daily News of Montcalm and Ionia Counties of Michigan the other day.  You can read the article here. It is a really fine article that…

Toronto Cemeteries returned to Residents

By Funeral Director Daily / January 7, 2019 /

Over the past couple of years we have written about cemeteries that get very little attention, are losing money, and are looking for someone to take them over.  Many times, they have passed simply by default to the government entity where the cemetery is located. Over the weekend we read an article that you can…

Maintaining -and Adding To – Your Heritage Business

By Funeral Director Daily / January 7, 2019 /

Great funeral homes and cemeteries don’t just pop up and start making lots of money overnight.  Matter of fact, it is very rare that a death care business can open in a new locale served by others and make a profit within the first couple of years.  New operations have to be ready to spill…

Funeral Directors and Their Community

By Funeral Director Daily / January 4, 2019 /

It is pretty common for local funeral home owners to be involved in their local Rotary Club, Kiwanis Club, American Legion and the like.  It is also pretty common that as these business minded folk earn respect in their communities they are asked to serve on school boards, city councils, and bank boards.  Those type…

The Reverence of Earth Burial?

By Funeral Director Daily / January 3, 2019 /

It’s a proven point that if you want to build a successful business and follow the American dream of making a lot of money, you need to deliver on and provide, at the right price, what the consumer public wants.  I was fortunate enough about six years ago to listen to a friend of mine…

Who Might the Buyers Be

By Funeral Director Daily / January 2, 2019 /

So, as Monday afternoon churned into our New Year’s Eve revelry we did get to see the equity markets take a final upturn, but for the year we saw the Dow Jones average lose 5.6%, the Nasdaq lose 3.9%, and the S & P 500 lose 6.2% of its value.  All in all, the major…

Could we have an LBO or Hostile Takeover in the Death Care Industry

By Funeral Director Daily / December 31, 2018 /

One of the things that I find interesting about the death care industry is the continuing consolidation and spin-offs that seem to always occur.  Get a few funeral directors together and they are always talking about who is acquiring who. I’ve been around long enough to see upstart Prime Succession grow fast and then be…