If you are operating a business, such as a funeral home or cemetery, and that business has been around for several years, whether you like it or not, that business has a perception to the public. The good news is that if the business has been around for a length of time, then it is fair to assume that there is a pretty good public image of the business in the consumer’s mind. . . . or the business would […]
Operating a funeral home and/or crematory operation as a business is an expensive proposition to start when you think of the fixed costs that it will take. It’s not like starting a lawn care service where you need some basic equipment and wait for the phone to ring to put it to use. In the lawn care business, outside of that original equipment, you operate on what I would call a high level of variable expenses only when you get […]
Today’s Afternoon Edition features several articles that we found interesting over the MLK holiday weekend. We’ll leave it to you to see which interest you and your choice of reading. However, there are some interesting articles. For instance, one article states that some funeral homes in California are actually having to turn away death calls due to the number of COVID-19 deaths they have seen. Another article that comes to us from Texas gives a perspective on how the Latino […]
My father died 43 years ago. I was a teenager. He was 58 years old and a prominent business man in his small community. I have no photos of the large event that was his visitation and funeral. I’ve got a newspaper article and two images inside my head. . . one image is that of our pastor in the pulpit overlooking a filled church sanctuary. The other image I have is of looking out from the back seat of […]
I woke up this morning (Monday as I write this) to see the Dow Jones Industrial average futures up over 5% on the news that Pfizer has had tremendous success with its Covid-19 vaccination drug trials. It’s a rainy day in Minnesota so I did my daily run on the treadmill watching Jim Cramer on CNBC talk about this event. Cramer commented that even with Pfizer’s announcement of its trial success so far, all we have over yesterday is increased […]
We are in the period of public companies reporting their 3rd Quarter results to the world and it is only a couple of weeks before Hillenbrand, parent company of Batesville Casket Company, and Matthews International, parent company of Aurora Casket Company will give us those results. As most of you know, those businesses have generally continued to remain profitable even in the face of downward unit sales over the past several years as cremation has cut into the number of […]
As we head into what we hope is a terrific Fall weekend Funeral Director Daily brings you three features as well as other articles on the world of death care. Our features include an article, that you can read here, about the Netherlands and the first person put in a “Mushroom Coffin” last week that is designed to turn the body into compost. The “Living Cocoon, as inventor Bob Henrikx calls it, is designed as the first living coffin and, […]
As I search for articles that might be of interest to readers of Funeral Director Daily I see lots of headlines. Headlines are the first indicator of what draws me into an article that might be of interest and then, if that has piqued my interest, I will get into the meat of the article to see if there is reader interest present. Some of these articles are actually obituaries of funeral colleagues that I feel may have enough interest […]
Our feature today in our afternoon edition comes to us from the SentinelSource.com. That is the online edition of the Keene (NH) Sentinel and today’s article features Keene Funeral Director Susan Simonds. Ms. Simonds is the operating manager of two funeral homes in Keene, both of which happen to be affiliated with the Dignity Memorial Network of Service Corporation International. The article, that you can read here, is a very good testament to someone who came to funeral service as […]
Jacob C. Vandenberg is the Mayor of Tinley Park, Illinois. He is also an owner and President of Vandenberg Funeral Homes which operate in Tinley Park and Mokena. You can see the funeral home web-site here. Jacob is a 4th generation funeral director and with his brother, Josh, now operates the family businesses. As if he isn’t busy enough with his work and Mayoral duties, he has taken on the duties of producing his own reality series about the death […]
