New products and services used by the American public seem to start as fads, become a trend, and then, those with staying power evolve into a tradition of life. Over the last few days I’ve noticed a couple of products that have either followed that road map or may be on their way to dissolving. And, I think that there is something for death care professionals to learn from the process. On one hand let’s look at Peleton, the stationary […]
If you have followed Funeral Director Daily for any length of time you know that I like to write articles about business. Sometimes I know that I get a little “heavy” on the business articles. However, I also try to put information on other subjects out there to keep a variety of topics at the forefront. Today is one of those days when I am reminded of the “humanity of the profession”. You see, on Tuesday morning, I checked into […]
Labor Day means a lot of different things to many people. It might mean the end of the Summer, Back-to-School time, the start of football season, or the start of the political campaign season. For me, however, when I ran my funeral business, it was always the funeral home yearly check-up time. You see, after August 31 we have been through two-thirds of the calendar year and that was a pretty significant amount of time to see how your business […]
Seeking Alpha author Austin Rogers makes a case for the upside future of conglomerate Matthews International. . .a company which receives about 46% of its revenue from the death care space. The article is really detailed about a little history of Matthews and where the company seems to be going in the future. Here’s a couple of items the author mentions about Matthews: Matthews International is a small-cap dividend growth stock that is easily overlooked for its small size and […]
Collecting of accounts receivables has came a long way from the 1930’s when a funeral home just asked the client family to “settle up” when ready. Today’s use of cash-flow makes it imperative that funeral homes reduce the amounts of money they have “on the books”. In addition, helping families receive money due them from insurers in a timely fashion is a great benefit to them in trying times also. To that end, C&J Financial, America’s #1 provider of insurance […]
At Funeral Director Daily we are very fortunate that we have so many Death Care profession industry experts that read our material. And, we are also very thankful that many of them will offer their expertise to our readers if asked. Learning what they know can help progressive funeral homes increase their own business. Today, I have asked one of those experts, Welton Hong, founder of Ring Ring Marketing, and an expert in the technical marketing of funeral homes on […]
The Cremation Association of North America (CANA) recently wrapped up its 104th Cremation Innovation Convention in Atlanta, Georgia. More than 60 exhibitors offered solutions for business to all kinds of convention attendees. Barbara Kemmis, Executive Director of CANA made these comments, “After two years of pivoting, it was wonderful to be surrounded again by the kind of energy you only get from a Convention. CANA Conventions are where we celebrate new leaders, build connections with colleagues, and get inspired by […]
Over the years I’ve heard from many consumers that their choice for a cremation disposition had nothing to do with price. Even though I heard that often, and believed the people that told me that, as a funeral professional it was always hard to fathom when it seemed that everywhere you turned you saw cremations advertised using “price point” philosophy. By “price point” philosophy I mean billboards, newspaper, or yellow page advertising by those in the cremation business stating “Complete […]
Funeral directors come with all kinds of interests and backgrounds. What makes them so interesting is the diverse backgrounds, cultures, and interests that are found among them. But the good ones all have the commonality of becoming ambassadors for the profession simply by plying their trade to humanity. Today, Funeral Director Daily tells you about one gentleman selected as the American Funeral Director of the Year by one publication, of an Irish lady who vied to become the wholistic ambassador […]
I had planned this article subject for this date simply because we have now finished the 2nd Quarter reports for all seven death care related companies that comprise the Funeral Director Daily Death Care Index (DCI). I hesitated, but then continued to move forward with this report on the public death care companies in spite of pretty negative news from the Jackson Hole economic summit which brought the markets quite a bit south on Friday. I’ve often felt that when […]
