Funeral Director Daily

Independents strategize niche on three continents

By Funeral Director Daily / April 5, 2019 /

Without even recognizing it funeral service has always had niche businesses inside of it.  Even full service funeral homes could fit in the niche category if they exclusively catered to protestant or catholic clientele. . . or if they were a cremation society type discounter.  We’ve always had some niche operations in the industry even…

Newspaper alleges Chicago Archdiocese uses cemetery funds to pay abuse costs

By Funeral Director Daily / April 4, 2019 /

An article was published last weekend by the Chicago Sun-Times that questioned if money from the Archdiocese of Chicago cemetery operations was being diverted to pay down debt incurred because of priest misconduct cases.  You can read the article here. The Catholic Church in Chicago has for years said, according to the article,  that the…

Contrarian investor John Snyder opines on StoneMor Partners

By Funeral Director Daily / April 3, 2019 /

Value investor and self-described contrarian investor John Snyder wrote an article for Seeking Alpha that you can read here entitled, “Why I’m buying StoneMor”.  We will leave the facts at that and I will give my opinion on the piece below. Funeral Director Daily take:  This is an article that will cause all experienced funeral…

Consumer issues and complaints in the death care industry

By Funeral Director Daily / April 2, 2019 /

It was a different day and age 30-40 years ago when funeral directors and those in the funeral profession were sought out for their opinions on anything death care related.  Opinions were given and communities and consumers accepted the educated opinions of the death care professionals.  It may be that funeral directors and others in…

Funeral up for Auction

By Funeral Director Daily / April 1, 2019 /

“We’re going to auction off a funeral that has been donated”, said Dick Crooks, Superintendent of Center Ridge Cemetery in Sullivan, Indiana. Crooks calls his auction night, “Indian’s Most Unusual Auction”. That’s right — in an article and television news story that you can see here out of Indiana, the Center Ridge Cemetery will be…

America’s next migration movement and its effect on funeral service

By Funeral Director Daily / March 29, 2019 /

I’m a history buff and I love to look back and learn what has happened in our country.  I’ve found that many times a “precipitator” happens and that event or group of events causes history to happen.  I was running on my treadmill the other morning watching CNBC for business news and Fox News for…

Park Lawn reports ’18 Year End Results

By Funeral Director Daily / March 28, 2019 /

Toronto based funeral industry company Park Lawn Corporation released a press release that you can read here about its 2018 year end performance earlier this week.  As you may know Park Lawn Corporation has grown greatly this year by acquisitions including The Signature Group, CMS Mid-Atlantic, and Citadel Management in the United States as well…

A niche market. . . .to pursue or avoid?

By Funeral Director Daily / March 27, 2019 /

I read an interesting article the other day from the Washington Post that you can read here about the death of a 77-year old man in Washington state.  It is an interesting article about a family’s decision to skip the funeral home and bring the man back to his home for three days of visitation…

Nova Scotia looking for funeral advocates

By Funeral Director Daily / March 26, 2019 /

According to this article from the Cape Breton Post, the Nova Scotia, Canada Board of Registration of Embalmers and Funeral Directors is offering two seats on their public board to members of the general public. The board has always been set up with only members from the funeral service profession or members nominated by the…

From pizza dough to the embalming room

By Funeral Director Daily / March 26, 2019 /

Today we bring you this great human interest story of 21 year old New Zealand funeral director and embalmer Ethyn Milliken.  In today’s world where it is sometimes hard to find employees in the funeral profession you will see from this story that great future funeral directors may be just around the corner or that…