cremation
Many funeral directors who own funeral homes operate a one roof funeral home. There’s nothing wrong with that — I operated a one roof funeral home for 20 years and, contrary to many people’s beliefs, there was always much to do and profits to be made. But, like me, many of those one roof funeral…
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An article entitled “Relational Spending in Funerals: Caring for others loved and lost” appeared in the March edition of the Journal of Consumer Psychology. The research for the article was done by assistant marketing Professor Sarah Whitley of the University of Georgia’s Terry College of Business. In this article about the study you can read…
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It was announced last week in this press release that Orlando, Florida based Foundation Partners Group has acquired the Atkins-Northland Funeral Home & Cremation Service located in Cloquet, Minnesota. According to the press release, this addition brings the Foundation Partner Group count in Minnesota to six locations. Again, according to the release, the acquired funeral…
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My own historical family businesses are a perfect example of the evolution of a business to fit the consumer and stay relevant. Back in 1872 my great-grandfather arrived in the New World with a skill as a cabinet maker. He set up shop and when people died family members approached him about building a coffin…
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Funeral directors have always liked conventions. I have great memories of Minnesota Funeral Directors Association (MFDA) conventions going back to the 1960’s. My dad always attended for a day and for his family it was an opportunity to get to the big city (Minneapolis) stay at the downtown Radisson Hotel, and probably get to take…
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Life insurance rates, at least for the time being, are holding stable regardless of the excess deaths due to Covid-19 in 2020. A recent press release from Policygenius, that you can access here, says that “The May index shows life insurance pricing stability, despite an increase in the U.S. death rate evident in data recently…
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Batesville, a division of Hillenbrand Industries, reported their Fiscal Year 2nd Quarter during the first week of May. While the entire company revenue increased 11% year over year, Batesville, the funeral service side of the business, increased their revenue by over 20% to a quarterly volume of $166 million. Here’s what was said in the…
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The other day I read an article from “The Hustle” concerning product or brand placement in movies and television shows. It was a pretty fascinating read of product placement, not something I was totally unfamiliar with. However, I was somewhat amazed at the amount of dollars that companies were willing to spend for product placement…
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Service Corporation International (SCI) reported their 1st Quarter financial results last week and in it we found a lot of information and perspective that we believe is informative and, in our opinion, pretty good news as to how the American public is coming out of the pandemic with their actions on funeral care seemingly indicating…
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Matthews International reported their Fiscal year 2021 2nd Quarter results last week and with the report we noticed how it is impossible to not notice that their Memorialization business segment which consists of Aurora Casket, Matthews Cremation, and their cemetery, memorial, and mausoleum division, is increasingly leading the company. The other two segments of Matthews…
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