Funeral Director Daily

When is the right age to establish a preneed account? . . . Maybe on your wedding day

By Funeral Director Daily / February 16, 2023 /

  We’ve touched on the subject in this forum before — when is the proper age, as a consumer, to look into getting a preneed funeral/cremation account?  I’ve opined that our funeral home used to look at Social Security age and then lowered that to age 55 and over.  Lately, according to all that I…

Another acquisition story . . . except this one’s going the other way

By Funeral Director Daily / February 15, 2023 /

    It’s pretty common place to read in Funeral Director Daily and other Death Care publications about the national and regional funeral home and cemetery consolidators announcing another acquisition.  However, when we were catching up with our reading a few days ago we noticed an acquisition. . . .that was “going the other way”.…

Suicide rates rise in 2021. . . Is the lack of funerals part of the reason?

By Funeral Director Daily / February 15, 2023 /

    Sometimes I just come across ideas for Funeral Director Daily articles by accident.  On Saturday I was going out for my weekly “reward” of a time at a coffee shop and stopped to buy a newspaper to read while there.  Since the local Naples Times-Herald was out, I had a choice of the…

Is your business Transactional or is it Transformational?

By Funeral Director Daily / February 14, 2023 /

    Most businesses that I know of are transactional in nature.  They take a fee and give their customer a product or service in return for that fee.  Funeral homes tend to be transactional — we charge a family for the services and merchandise we render and then we provide those products and/or services…

DCI shines. . .outgains some composite indexes year to date

By Funeral Director Daily / February 13, 2023 /

    Funeral Director Daily’s Death Care Index (DCI), which is reflective of Death Care public companies public stock prices, has grown at a pace of about 9.7% for the first six weeks of calendar year 2023.  That rate of increase surpasses both the Dow Jones Industrials and the S&P 500 indexes during the same…

Park Lawn makes another Kansas City market acquisition

By Funeral Director Daily / February 10, 2023 /

  We will end this week with news of another acquisition in the Death Care space.  This press release from earlier this week announced Park Lawn Corporation’s definitive agreement to acquire Kansas City metro area based businesses that include substantially all of the assets of Carson-Speaks Chapel in Independence, Missouri; Speaks Buckner Chapel in Buckner,…

What’s next for Matthews?

By Funeral Director Daily / February 9, 2023 /

    The last year has brought many changes to Death Care as it pertains to those companies that have been operated in the public markets.  Both StoneMor and Dignity plc have been taken out of the public realm and into private ownership space and Batesville has been spun-out of Hillenbrand Industries and purchased by…

Passing the torch

By Funeral Director Daily / February 8, 2023 /

    Trust me.  This will not be a political article but I got the thought for it when I read this article in the Sunday Minneapolis Star Tribune entitled, “The Grayest Generation – the torch has been passed to the oldest pair of presidential front-runners ever.  Is it time for a younger generation?”  …

Living paycheck to paycheck, de-influencers. . . will they affect the death care market

By Funeral Director Daily / February 7, 2023 /

    This morning’s article related to the changing face of religion and how that has affected the funeral/memorial/tribute portion of the death care business over the past couple of decades.  Over the weekend I noticed a couple of items that signaled current trends and put out the question as to whether or not these…

Re-evaluating the Funeral . . moving away from religion

By Funeral Director Daily / February 7, 2023 /

    There is not only a lot of talk lately about the funeral, memorial service, and celebrations that families are contemplating  in the future for themselves and their loved ones, but there is also a lot of investment money being spent on companies who want to be on the upside swing of what these…