Wisconsin acquisition follows “Successful” strategy

March 13, 2026/Business, Finance/

A quote from a 1987 Los Angeles Times article on the then growing acquisitions of Pierce Brothers Mortuaries goes like this, “In increasing numbers, long-established mortuaries are closing or, more often, selling to (firms) which can spread overhead costs . . . . among several funeral homes.”

Another quote from that 1987 article is made by Mortuary Management publisher Ronald A. Hast and goes like this, “It’s survival of the fittest through an adjustment to the reality of cost versus income”.

That Los Angeles Times article, that you can access here, is almost 40 years old but many of the comments are as applicable today as they were in 1987. Another quote from John Morrow, a former Pierce Brothers President and advisor to Service Corporation International (SCI) at the time, also relays thoughts of 2026 even though the quote was from 1987. Morrow said, “A lot of small family businesses are beginning to realize they have a lot of money tied up underneath funeral homes (valuable real estate) that are not high volume businesses. . ”

It’s interesting that I found that archived article as I was looking for background information on the Downs Life Celebration Center of Superior, Wisconsin, and its acquisition of two competitors that was announced last month. Not only did the owners of Downs Life Celebration Center acquire two competing mortuaries but the article states that they plan to sell the acquired real estate and move the operations of the acquisitions into their present location. (You can access the article here.)

The owners of the Downs Life Celebration Center say that they are prepared and ready for the possible influx of services into their facility. The article announcing the acquisition says this about Downs Life, “Downs Life Celebration Center has the capacity to handle multiple services a day through a mixture of in-house and off-site services. The center embraces the move to celebrations of life and opens up new options, like hosting a meal on site.”

Here is the website for the Downs Life Celebration Center

Tom Anderson
Funeral Director Daily

Funeral Director Daily take: I think it is often overlooked that when funeral home owners want to expand the best-expansion and acquisition target may be their existing competitor(s). I made an acquisition very similar to this Wisconsin acquisition and moved the acquired funeral home operations into our existing building and it turned out to be one of the very best moves I made in 33 years of business.

If you have the confidence that you operate with a good, solid brand you have the ability to bring in much more revenue and contain costs. For instance, you save money by having only one facility, one utility bill, one property tax bill, one secretary, and on and on.

Before I made the move I called my trusted advisor, the late Tom Johnson of Johnson Consulting Group, who at one time had been the President of Pierce Brothers Mortuaries and is mentioned in the linked 1987 Los Angeles Times article. He told me what I was planning to do was exactly how they had built Pierce Brothers — “Buy a neighborhood mortuary, move it into another neighborhood mortuary and then sell the real estate to pay for a big part of the purchase”.

I think that is exactly what the owners of Downs Life Celebration Center have in mind and my guess is that it will work out very well for them. While Superior, Wisconsin, is a border city and shares a city limits with Duluth, Minnesota, the current population of Superior is listed at 26,000 and, to my knowledge, the Downs Life Celebration Center will be the only full-service mortuary in town.

Across the bridge in Duluth, Minnesota, you will find family-owned mortuaries and the Foundation Partners Group controlled Cremation Society of Minnesota. The population of Duluth is approximately 88,000.

More news from the world of Death Care: