Cremation

The Crematory Dilemma: Continued consumer choice vs. the NIMBY attitude

By Funeral Director Daily / September 25, 2024 /

    For over a year and a half Funeral Director Daily has followed the application process of the Evans Funeral Chapel in trying to locate and build a new crematory in the White Marsh area of Baltimore (MD) County.  It now appears, because of a zoning change for the land in question, that the…

Carriage Services: Strategies driving improvements

By Funeral Director Daily / August 15, 2024 /

  I’m one that believes you can learn something from seeing what the public companies in funeral service are doing.  When I was active with my funeral home in the business I would read their quarterly reports and look at whatever comments were made during the companies quarterly earnings call transcripts. . . . .Even…

Where’s Waldo? . . .and what happened to Eirene?

By Funeral Director Daily / August 6, 2024 /

    Eirene Cremations, the Toronto based direct-cremation business seems to have vanished from the world of Death Care.  It was not so long ago that the company announced expansion into Western Canada and the state of Florida from their Toronto base.   Then only a couple of weeks ago Funeral Director Daily was told…

Cremation has grown to a rate where growth is now “decelerating”

By Funeral Director Daily / July 24, 2024 /

  It was back in June when the Cremation Association of North America (CANA) issued its 2024 Annual Statistical Report.  That report showed as CANA said, “. . . “the national cremation rate has grown steadily and predictably for the last 50 years, indicating that neither the recession nor the pandemic have influenced the growth…

Unclaimed bodies: Growing and a threat to your financial success?

By Funeral Director Daily / July 22, 2024 /

    If you do research like I do about the Death Care profession you come across lots of articles that talk about county morgues running out of room to hold human remains.  And, one of the big reasons is that so many human remains are going unclaimed in this day and age.   When…

Synergy is working for the Wilbert Group

By Funeral Director Daily / July 17, 2024 /

    “Synergy” is an interesting word and one that is almost always used when companies align, merge, or are aquired.  It is defined as such, “the interaction or cooperation of two or more organizations, substances, or other agents to produce a combined effect greater than the sum of their separate effects”.   That’s exactly…

Hydrogen energy being tested to potentially “green up” cremation

By Funeral Director Daily / June 6, 2024 /

    In what is what we believe to be a first around the world, the Worthing Crematorium in southern Great Britain has become the first to have one of its cremation chambers switch to hydrogen energy.  In what has became known as the “Worthing HyCrem Project”, one of the three cremators at the Worthing…

Is “Service” more important than “Convenience and Price”?

By Funeral Director Daily / May 22, 2024 /

      Is “Service” more important than “Convenience and Price”?  That’s an interesting question that some businesses are asking themselves today. . . . .and the answer is “It Depends”.   Just over the last weekend I came upon two articles — one pertaining to Walmart and the other to their rival Target.  In…

Here’s a unique way to blend land preservation with urn burials

By Funeral Director Daily / May 17, 2024 /

    Funeral directing company  A.W. Lymn of Nottinghamshire, Great Britain, has been giving the green light to construct an ancient style facility for the disposition of cremated human remains.  As this article maintains, “they have been granted permission for the first and only modern barrow site in the East Midlands”.   (Editor’s Note:  I…

Our take: Post-Cremation products are here to stay

By Funeral Director Daily / May 15, 2024 /

  One of my friends attended the latest convention of the International Cemetery, Cremation, and Funeral Association (ICCFA) and reported to me that “there were a crazy amount of post-cremation product vendors exhibiting available options”.  And, sometimes when I walk into arrangement rooms where many post-cremation options are available I get a sense of how big…