Like many of you who read Funeral Director Daily, I like being an amateur investor in the stock market.  Back in the 1980’s I read two books that have became my gospel for investing.  One of them was in the early 80’s and was a book by John Naisbitt entitled “Megatrends” and the second book that influenced me a great deal was a 1989 publication by Peter Lynch entitled “One up on Wall Street.”  These books had different approaches to what was being written, but in common they both talked about how success can be increased if you can spot “trends” ahead of the masses.

Naisbitt’s book taught me about spotting trends as he tried to identify trends that would change our lives in the future and if you spotted these trends before others, then you could use it for your advantage.  Since I read that book, I’ve always tried to spot trends in my field of work and outside of my field as possible investments.  In the funeral business spotting those trends led us to offer aftercare and build a crematory in our community before my competitors did and, I believe, led to great market share gains by our firm.

Naisbitt preached that when trends start getting momentum they are hard to stop.  One thing I remember from that book is that he pointed out trends that led America from an agrarian economy to a industrial economy when Henry Ford invented the manufacturing “line”.  He then said we started trending to a “technology” economy when phones and televisions went into every house.  That is where we were when his book was published in the early 1980’s and he predicted at that time that America would soon become an “information” economy but he didn’t know how.  We now know that the internet was the tool that brought us to his prediction of the “information” society a decade later than his publication date.

So, what does my reading these books have to do with the death care industry today.  Well, from my point of view it is all about spotting trends.  We all know that the funeral business has moved from “undertakers” in the 1800’s to established “funeral homes” in the early 1900’s and to a majority “cremation” based death care economy at the beginning of this century.  Those who saw that coming and invested in a cremation infrastructure have done well and are sitting pretty good.  Those that did not see those changes coming will probably have to pay more to catch up.

That fairly long introduction brings me to this article from The Japan Times that tells us of the Japanese funeral company Davius Living Yamato that has found a trend of people living longer and because of that having funerals that are much smaller in attendance.  The article points out that their findings indicate that people who would have had over 100 people at their funeral tend to only have 20-30 people if they die at  80 years old and above.

Davius Living Yamato operates 60 funeral homes at this time and of those, 14 of them are being operated out of converted convenience stores that they have found available and easily renovated to become small funeral homes in great locations.  Manager Hirohiko Ishii is quoted in the article as saying, “Amid soaring demand for small-sized funerals in this rapidly aging society, a property the size of a convenience store was just what we were looking for.”

From my point of view, the availability and affordability of convenience stores may be increased if you, like me, spot the trend of more and more electrical vehicles on our streets reducing the percentage of vehicles that need gasoline fill-ups at these convenience stores.

So, today’s article is one to trigger thought.  I would suggest you read the article from The Japan Times and then visit with your staff about what trends they see whereby you may be able to get out front of the competitors to build your business.

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