Funeral homes change hands. . . What’s in a name?

August 16, 2023/Business/

I recently read about two different funeral homes that were acquired by individual funeral directors. More on those specific funeral homes in a minute. When I read the newspaper articles about each it was interesting to note that one funeral home would be keeping its name, at least for some time, and the other funeral home would be changing its name — a part of which has apparently signaled a successful operation in the community for over 90 years.

Seeing those differences made me ponder something that I have always questioned — “Why in the funeral home business are historical names almost always retained by the acquirer?” I think there are good reasons, such as the historical goodwill and the name recognition and top-of-mind-awareness for the consumer in an infrequent purchase category of sales.

However, I also think that, at times, there are reasons to change a name upon the sale of a business. For instance, our first funeral home change of hands article comes from Guelph, Ontario, and makes note that the McIntyre & Wilke Funeral Home was recently sold to employee Dean Brombal and will now be known as Brombal Funeral Home and Cremation Care. Again, according to the article, Brombal becomes the 6th owner of the funeral home since it was founded in 1932 by Elmer McIntyre, whose name appears to have survived all of the other ownership changes.

You can read the article on this transaction here.

Tom Anderson
Funeral Director Daily

Here’s what Bromball says of the name change, “I feel it’s important to be transparent about who owns the business but I really hope this signals my commitment to the community as well. We will always be mindful of, and grateful for, those who came before and we will preserve those names as we go forward. It has been my honour to inherit the legacy of independent professional service provided for generations by the McIntyre, Wilkie, Campbell, Gilchrist and Skipper families.”

The second funeral home company that we recently saw changing hands was the Liewers Funeral Homes of Imperial, Wauneta and Benkelman, Nebraska. According to the article, the Liewers had owned the businesses for 32 years. They were recently purchased by Stephen and Kayla Mulder. In the newspaper article on this transaction it is noted “At this time, Mulder said they will keep the same business names in all three communities—Liewer Funeral Home in Imperial and Wauneta, and Benkelman Memorial Chapel. A name change will come later on, he said.”

While neither of these transactions are transactions by a larger company of a smaller company, in my research for this article I came across this article that is entitled, “Tuck-in acquisitions: What it means, how it works.”

“. . . .a tuck-in acquisition means a complete absorption of the smaller company—it does not maintain any of its own original systems or structure after the acquisition—a bolt-on acquisition may allow the acquired business to operate independently within its own department of the larger company.

In the case of a bolt-on acquisition, acquiring businesses allow the smaller entity to keep its brand name or operate independently because it may be advantageous to do so, particularly if the smaller entity has built goodwill or name recognition for its brand. One real-world example of a bolt-on acquisition is Amazon’s purchase of Whole Foods.”

By those definitions almost all acquisitions by the large corporate companies would come under the “Bolt-on” category because they generally work off the goodwill , brand identity, and name recognition of the smaller acquired company.

Some random thoughts — I’ve often looked at “Secondary” branding and questioned the wisdom of such. . . Secondary such as “Jones Insurance Agency — A Trusted Choice Insurer”. In that case, “Trusted Choice” is the secondary brand. My insurer for the past 35 years happens to be in that category. . . but I’ve never referred to his company as “Trusted Choice”. . . . his brand to me is “Jones Insurance Agency”. . . .yet his office door has “Trusted Choice” and its logo on it.

Or, what about “Jones Funeral Home — A Dignity Memorial Chapel”? My guess is that in a local community that funeral home is continued to be called “Jones Funeral Home”. . . . If so, what value does the “Dignity Memorial” moniker bring it? When people move from this community do they look for “Dignity Memorial” funeral homes in their new location?

I’ve often wondered, of course hindsight is 20/20, if Service Corporation International should have been more aggressive in building a consumer brand with their funeral homes long ago. If so, would they have that national consumer brand today? My opinion is that they might have lost a little in the short run by using Dignity Memorial as the trade name immediately upon an acquisition with the family name as the secondary brand, but in the long run I’m guessing that their national consumer branding would be much stronger. I think they have moved in that direction with their Neptune Society that now is over 45 locations strong according to its website.

An interesting story on branding — I’ve told my readers that I once had the privilige to sit on a regional advisory board for Norwest/Wells Fargo. Most of you probably don’t remember the name Norwest but that is the bank I was originally appointed to this board for. In 1998 Minneapolis based Norwest was the 11th largest bank in America and took part in a merger with San Francisco based Wells Fargo Bank. Norwest was the surviving entity, but as note below, in Wikipedia’s version, you will note that Norwest believed that Wells Fargo had a better brand recognition and history so they adopted the Wells Fargo name and stage-coach frontier history and dropped the Norwest name and history:

“Although Norwest was the nominal survivor, the merged company took the better-known Wells Fargo name and moved its headquarters to San Francisco. Norwest Bank, NA merged into Wells Fargo Bank, NA as the merged bank’s legal banking entity. The merged company claims legacy Wells Fargo’s history (dating to 1852) as its own, and also adopted legacy Wells Fargo’s ticker symbol, WFC. However, it retains Norwest’s pre-1998 stock price history and corporate structure, and all pre-1998 SEC filings are under Norwest, not Wells Fargo”

In my opinion, the last 25 years has proved that decision was the right one.

More news from the world of Death Care: