Eirene Cremations, the Toronto based direct-cremation business seems to have vanished from the world of Death Care.  It was not so long ago that the company announced expansion into Western Canada and the state of Florida from their Toronto base.

 

Then only a couple of weeks ago Funeral Director Daily was told that the business had departed from Western Canada.  We looked on the website and, sure enough, those locations were no longer listed.  Then, just days ago, I went to check the website and could not access it, nor can I access it at this time.

 

Finally, in doing a Google search for the company I came up with listings from both the Bereavement Authority of Ontario (BAO) and the Better Business Bureau of Canada with interesting information.

 

The BAO page had this comment in a Notice to Consumers, “Eirene Cremations Inc. (Eirene) voluntarily terminated its Transfer Service Licence Class 1 on July 16, 2024. Consumers who have prepaid cremation or other death care services with Eirene Cremations Inc. are encouraged to contact Bereavement Authority of Ontario Inspector. . . .” 

 

The BBB page had this comment on it “According to information in BBB files, this business is no longer in business”.

 

That information is interesting as one would expect if the business was sold or merged the assumption would be that consumers would be encouraged to call the succeeding entity with prearrangment concerns.  However, to this date, Funeral Director Daily has no proven knowledge of a sale, merger, name change, or closing of the company.

 

While Funeral Director Daily has no indications what has happened with the company the lack of information comes as somewhat of a surprise to us as all things looked “full speed ahead” for the company in information we have seen during 2024.  Here’s a couple of items that we thought were very positive news for the company in January and April of 2024.

 

A YouTube video of Kevin Edwards, former CEO of “Skip the Dishes” discusses his moving into the COO position for Eirene.  January 2024 with Bloomberg News Network.

 

A short article from The Pulse 2.0, a publication with a business start-up and venture capital focus,with headlines “Eirene:  Online funeral services provider secures $4 million”.  In this article a quote is attributed to Kevin Talbot who is described as the “Co-founder and Managing Partner” of Relay Ventures —  who were described as the “Lead investor”.  This article was dated April 4, 2024.

 

However, if you go to the Relay Ventures website you will not find Eirene listed in their portfolio of invested companies nor will you find Eirene listed in their grouping of “Exited” companies.

 

So, it remains a mystery to me.  Funeral Director Daily is not a “investigative” nor “breaking news” platform so we will leave it to others to find out what has happened to a company that looked very promising in the burgeoning online direct cremation platform.  Maybe the answer is as simple as the funding round not getting closed out and the company running out of capital to operate.

 

Here’s another article on Eirene’s April 2024 investment round from Canadian start-up and venture capital focused publication Betakit.

Funeral Director Daily take:  While I’ll admit that I don’t know the inner workings of Eirene Cremations, it appeared to me that they were a “direct cremation online platform” for consumers who would choose low-cost direct cremation.  It also looked to me as if the “modus operandi” was to acquire clientele and then service that clientele by contracting with local cremation providers and licensed transportation operators.  I don’t believe that the company owned their own cremation facilities.

 

I’ll also tell you that from what I heard, that the process seemed to be working in the Toronto home-base area.  However, I relied on articles and never did see any financial data from Eirene to back up my thoughts.  I was impressed when I listened to the above YouTube video and the assumed knowledge that a well-known venture firm looked to be interested as a backer from the Pulse 2.0 article in April 2024.

 

At a funeral director gathering in early May 2024, those impressions led me to ask two very highly placed executives in the funeral home and cemetery business about a possible acquisition of Eirene by one of the regional or national operators and then take the concept national. . . similar to the acquisition of Tulip Cremation by Foundation Partners Group a few years ago.  I was somewhat surprised when they said “It will never happen”.

 

They went on to explain to me that they had “done the financial math in every way possible” and, in their opinion, a direct cremation provider without their own professional staff, fleet, and crematories would never have margins large enough, once they pay the contracted companies who do the removals and cremations, to pay the “customer acquisition” costs necessary to build out that model.  They made it really clear to me, again in their opinion, that to get the margins to fund “customer acquisition” while at the same time paying “contracted providers” would drive a company’s prices to a higher number than local funeral homes and crematories would be charging in competition with them.

 

Again, this time from my perspective, I’m of the impression that Tulip Cremations has not been as fast a grower or as profitable as Foundation Partners Group (FPG) had hoped for at this time. . . . and they are locating, for the most part, Tulip Cremation, an online provider, in cities where FPG has existing facilities, staff, and crematories available in the funeral homes that they have acquired.  In essence, they should have higher margins for their online cremation business because they will not be paying contracted providers. . . . . and, I think they still have a hard time in funding customer acquisition costs.

 

More news from the world of Death Care:

• Orange County veterans cemetery picks up steam following Anaheim approval.  Voice of Orange County (CA)
• Woman arrested in missing ashes investigation.  BBC  (Great Britain)
• Body donors pull requests to Harvard after morgue scandal.  WBUR Public Radio (MA)
• Columbaria at Southwick Cemetry to accommodate growing trend for cremation.  MassLive (MA)

 

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