Tom Anderson
Funeral Director Daily

In the past ten days I have had the opportunity to participate in my annual golf outing over four days in Las Vegas, Nevada, with 127 other death care industry operatives from all aspects of the industry.  The event, which is a get-together of old friends, is spearheaded by Johnson Consulting’s Tom Johnson, and is in its 36th year.  I have been attending, missing only a couple of events, since 1994.  It is always a great time to catch up with what is happening in the industry in North America.  Funeral home owners, public company executives from both the service and merchandiser sides, pre-need industry executives, and retired industry veterans are in attendance.

I’ll also have the opportunity to address the graduates of the University of Minnesota Mortuary Science program on Friday at their commencement.  It is an honor I always enjoy.  Because of this event, I stopped by the office of Dr. Michael LuBrant, Director of the U of M Mortuary Science program to visit last week.

Those two opportunities with ensuing discussions gave me an insight as to what seems to be, at least anecdotally. happening in the industry today.  Here are some things I found interesting:

• Professional staff is getting more difficult to hire and retain.  Certain areas of the country seem to have more trouble, but in general there is a big problem around the entire country in the deep rural and the inner city areas.  Suburban and what I call “Regional Center” cities seem to have less problems.
• Professional staff seem to consider salary and benefits secondary to working conditions and level of authority in what causes a great working situation.  My guess here, is that salaries are pretty even around the country.  If there was a bigger discrepancy then it would matter more.  Not being on call is a big plus and many larger firms are contracting out their removals so their directors can work a close to 9-5 schedule.
• Only about one in ten mortuary school students is coming from a funeral service family.  That compares to over 50% when I was in mortuary school back in the late 1970s.
• More mergers, acquisitions, and consolidations – which is inevitable if less funeral service families continue on to another generation.  One industry expert told me that he sees some of the Regional Consolidators getting so big that he predicts a coming consolidation of regional firms to form another large national firm — possibly public in nature such as SCI or Carriage Services.
• Cremation is growing rapidly, revenues are declining because of such, and funeral homes are learning how to be profitable in a cremation environment.  Cremation is no longer a dirty word to many, but one which gives rise to new profit strategies and opportunities.
• In the world of cremation, especially direct cremation, you need to get volume to do well.  In this “new world” volume will be the key.
• Growth in on-line registration and death certificate information of immediate (Direct)  cremations is growing fast.
• Many look to a “Disrupter” in the industry to come — such as Amazon has been to the retail industry.  No one seems to have any idea as to what the “Disrupter” might be

So there you have it for now. . . some things to ponder and figure out how trends going in those directions will move your strategies.  After thirty five years in the industry at least I’ve learned it doesn’t stand still!![wpforms id=”436″ title=”true” description=”true”]