...INDUSTRY AND COMPETITORS The funeral home industry has been at a steady decrease for the past decade. Not only is this present at a local or regional level, but at a national level. The traditional funeral service and burial are becoming less favored. Instead, across the country, families are preoccupied by external distractions. These distractions have nothing to do with the funeral homes’ capabilities, but with the growing popularity of cremations. “Our cremations have tripled in the past 5 years,†said Jason Monell, a funeral director in Northern Kentucky. Cremation has been a popular choice in the West for years, but the trend is sweeping the country as cremation gains wider acceptance. “In 2002, arrangements for 22 percent of all deaths in the United States included cremation, according to the National Funeral Directors Association. By 2010, the association expects that to nearly double†(Conner). There are many reasons why cremations are going to take over the industry down the road. This causes funeral directors to create other services and opportunities to make their businesses profitable. The first main reason why cremations are gaining popularity has to do with the environment. This is probably one of the most apparent and obvious reasons. Cemeteries are starting to run out of land causing people to develop a concern. However, there are measures currently taking place to help conserve land. For example, Highland Cemetery in Northern Kentucky has dedicated...
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...RYAN FUNERAL HOME CASE INTRODUCTION On a warm Chicago evening in August 2005, Regina Ryan leaned back in an overstuffed armchair in her brightly lit apartment above Ryan Funeral Home. Seventy-five years old and a widow, Regina smiled as she looked at the sons and daughters gathered before her: Maureen, Patrick, Sean, Brendan, Conner, and Siobhan. Finally she spoke: “Your father was proud to own his own funeral home. He built this from nothing to what it is today. By serving local families so well, the name Ryan Funeral Home has come to mean compassion, integrity, and quality to those in this area. Reputation is everything in the funeral business. “He’s gone now, and I must decide what’s to become of all this. I always thought it would be a simple decision: pass the business to the next generation.” “It’s not so simple. The funeral industry has changed dramatically from what it was when we started out. It’s much harder to make a living than it once was. Nonetheless, I know that the reason your father started this business was because he wanted something to pass on to his children. This was to be his legacy.” As her mother spoke, Maureen thought about how important the future of Ryan Funeral Home was to her personally. She was the only one of the six children who had become a funeral director, and she has worked alongside her father for eleven years. Maureen often met with families to make funeral arrangements when her father was busy elsewhere...
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...February 23, 2014 Funeral Homes Losing a loved one is a heartbreaking experience. Experience, that sooner or later we all will go through. When your loved one dies, the last thing you want to do is to have to take care of paperwork and the details of the burial or cremation. That is where the funeral homes steps in to help you out in this difficult moment. I chose to visit Evergreen Memorial Gardens Funeral Chapel and Cemetery which provides complete funeral services, graveside services, complete cremation services, immediate cremation services and offer personalized services as well. This beautiful building is located in south Vancouver, Washington. It is surrounded by green grass and tall trees. It has big parking lot to accommodate everybody who comes there. I liked it because of the variety services and support this business provides. I was very interested in embalming. Embalming is a process which is used to temporary prevents body from decomposition. Embalmer injects chemicals, embalming fluid, into arteries and stomach areas to keep body looking as natural as possible for funeral services. This process allows relatives to make necessary arrangements for final ceremony. In a state of Washington embalming cannot be done without permission. Also, embalming is not required by the law. If embalming is not done on the body, body has to be refrigerated. According to Evergreen Memorial Gardens Funeral Home, if the family chooses not to do embalming on deceased person, there...
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...How the funeral industry is being impacted and changed by the Global Recession? Benjamin Franklin’s old adage “in this world nothing can be said to be certain except death and taxes” has never been truer. However, if he was around today he might change his spelling of “death” to “debt”. Taxes in Ireland have increased recently and the forthcoming emergency budget looks certain to bring further misery to the population. So while governments are busy collecting whatever taxes they can, people are still dying! You are born and then you die, it is a simple fact of life. In fact the portion in between we call life is the uncertain part. When you die you will require the services of an undertaker / funeral director. They are there to tax you one final time and put the proverbial last nail in your coffin, with a bill attached! With the exception of a huge natural disaster, accident or war, the funeral industry can quite accurately predict its number of customers for the forthcoming year using the country’s population statistics and current death rates. With such detailed statistics to hand this has to be one of the easiest industries to forecast. Figure 1.1 shows the death rate falling in recent years as population increases. Each customer is new (although dead!) but new business can only be achieved by taking from a competitor and not by a sudden jump in demand for the product. Andrew Loos explains “You’re battling for current customers (of other funeral homes), many of them with deep...
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...Calgary Funeral Services Cooperative Business Plan DRAFT AUGUST 8, 2011 Contents 1.0 BACKGROUND INFORMATION 1 1.1 Executive Summary 1 1.2 Comparative Cooperative Model 2 1.3 Feasibility Study and Background Research 3 2.0 Business Description 5 2.1 Corporate Structure 5 2.2 Business Objectives 7 2.3 Market Assessment 7 2.4 Products & Services 8 2.5 Location 10 2.6 Human Resources 11 2.7 Regulatory Issues 12 3.0 MARKETING STRATEGY 13 3.1 Pricing Strategy 15 3.2 Customer Service 16 4.0 FINANCIAL PLAN 17 4.1 Capitalization Strategy 17 4.2 Sales & Income Projections 18 4.3 Critical Factors 19 1.0 BACKGROUND INFORMATION 1.1 Executive Summary The Calgary Cooperative Funeral Service seeks to create a cooperative enterprise to provide funeral services that are modestly priced and environmentally friendly within the Calgary market. Based on an initial membership the founding organizations - cooperatives in Calgary, Calgary Legions, Churches and individual Calgarians, with a combined member share/loan offering and bank loan for a combined total of $525,000, this business plan calls for the enterprise to reach positive cash flow toward the end of the 3rd year of operation. The business model seeks to establish funeral/crematoria services which is centrally located and would service the members of the founding organizations as well as the funeral needs...
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...A mortician could also be known as a funeral director. They are the ones usually involved in the embalming, cremation and burial of the deceased. Most funeral homes are a family business that is ran by morticians within the family. In the United States, the individual states each have their own licensing regulations for funeral directors. Most require an associate’s degree or a bachelor’s degree, along with a board examination. The educational requirements for a mortician can be associate’s degree to a master’s degree. You can also train to be a technical assistant for two years. Mortician’s have to keep their license by taking classes. College courses to become a mortician vary from your basic business classes, to psychological understanding, becoming a mortician requires many different skills. You will need to take business classes to run the funeral home, anatomy to embalm the body, and cosmetology to prepare the body for the funeral. You also have to take courses on dealing with other peoples grievances over losing a loved one and how to respond to them…being a funeral director is a very emotional job. When funeral directors are notified of a death, they arrange for the body to be moved to the funeral home. They get the information needed for the death certificate and for the newspaper death notice, or obituary. They meet with the family of the deceased to discuss the details of the funeral service, including the selection of a casket. It’s a lot more than just embalming...
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...respected member of the community. With all these basics in place, it is the goal of Loving Arms to engender an organizational culture that thrives on teamwork and celebrates diversities both within the organization as well as the diversities within the community we serve. Loving Arms needs to do outreach and research regarding what and where the needs of the community are. We also need to attend and participate in community meetings, advertise our newly formed business, and create pamphlets with information about local, state, and federal laws as well as facts sheets. A funeral home, funeral parlor or mortuary, is a business that provides burial and funeral services for the dead and their families. Not only do they provide these services but they also treat or should treat at least every client like a family member. These services may include a prepared wake and funeral, and the provision of a chapel for the funeral if a church is not available. They also offer crematory services. The director is there through...
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...be part interview and part essay. A local funeral director was interviewed about final preparations, the purpose of a modern funeral, how people cope with death, and unusual request for funeral services. A brief discussion how some modern funeral traditions were originated and why death is almost always attached to fear will also be addressed. Death is still reacted to with fear even with all the modern scientific and medical knowledge that is available to our society. Since no one has ever died and returned to tell about what death is really like, we as humans have a natural fear of what is not understood or cannot be controlled (www.wyfda.org 1). The typical response to death is avoidance because death is not a pleasant topic of conversation. Most speak of people dying and not focusing on themselves. Fear has been a response to death since primitive times; this fear started the first burial rituals, that were meant to protect the lining from the spirits, which caused the death (1). Along with the burning of corpses to destroy evil spirits, some cultures would eat the deceased as a show of respect to the person who died (www.anthropology.uwaterloo.ca 2). The fear of the dead carried over into religious thought and sacrifices of all kinds were made in honor of the dead and to appease the spirits. A modern funeral for most cultures is a spiritual experience. According to a local funeral director, Charlie Kurrus (Kurrus Funeral Home), wakes that are held today are derived from...
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...HISTORY OF THE INDUSTRY In the Philippines, the funeral service industry is relatively new. Until the 20th century, funerals were organized by family and neighbors and held at home. People were often buried on family property. As communities became larger and more established common cemeteries began to be used. Funeral homes were later established to relieve the family of the logistical problems presented by a death. The term “undertaker” refers to the person who “under took” responsibility for funeral arrangements. Many of the early undertakers were furniture makers because building caskets was a logical extension of their business. For them, undertaking was a second business rather than a primary profession. Embalming began during the Civil War when it became necessary to preserve the bodies of dead soldiers for the trip home. As embalming gained favor, the skills that it required helped to turn undertaking into a real profession. On the other hand, casket making also evolved from the early days when the undertakers made the coffins. By 1950, there are a lot of manufacturing caskets in the Philippines. At that time, over 50% of the caskets sold were made of cloth-covered wood or cardboard. However, metal caskets were gaining favor and they required a more sophisticated manufacturing process that could only be provided by larger companies. Merging of the casket manufacturers occurred during the same time as merging of the funeral homes and cemeteries. Consumer preferences continued...
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...Abstract The funeral industry, one of the oldest and among the most stable of industries regardless of economic trends, is facing one of the biggest challenges of its existence, and the threat is coming from an unlikely source – their own customers. People’s attitudes towards funerals have been changing and as a result, the number of traditional funerals has been declining. "Show me the manner in which a nation cares for its dead and I will measure with mathematical exactness the tender mercies of its people, their respect for the laws of the land, and their loyalty to high ideals." -- Sir William Gladstone Survival in the U.S. Funeral Industry: A PESTEL Analysis The funeral industry, one of the oldest and among the most stable of industries regardless of economic trends, is facing one of the biggest challenges of its existence, and the threat is coming from an unlikely source – their own customers. People’s attitudes towards funerals have been changing and as a result, the number of traditional funerals has been declining. Funeral customs and services are as old as civilization itself. Throughout the history of mankind, every culture and civilization studied has attended to the proper care and disposition of their dead by way of three common things: some type of funeral rites, rituals and ceremonies, a sacred resting place and memorialization (Whittaker, 2005). Researchers have discovered Neanderthal burial grounds dating back to 60,000 BC along with animal...
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...A mortician could also be known as a funeral director. They are the ones usually involved in the embalming, cremation and burial of the deceased. Most funeral homes are a family business that is ran by morticians within the family. In the United States, the individual states each have their own licensing regulations for funeral directors. Most require an associate’s degree or a bachelor’s degree, along with a board examination. The educational requirements for a mortician can be associate’s degree to a master’s degree. You can also train to be a technical assistant for two years. Mortician’s have to keep their license by taking classes. College courses to become a mortician vary from your basic business classes, to psychological understanding, becoming a mortician requires many different skills. You will need to take business classes to run the funeral home, anatomy to embalm the body, and cosmetology to prepare the body for the funeral. You also have to take courses on dealing with other peoples grievances over losing a loved one and how to respond to them…being a funeral director is a very emotional job. When funeral directors are notified of a death, they arrange for the body to be moved to the funeral home. They get the information needed for the death certificate and for the newspaper death notice, or obituary. They meet with the family of the deceased to discuss the details of the funeral service, including the selection of a casket. It’s a lot more than just embalming...
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...comprehensive system. Every business is likely to be different. As an example, business transactions at a supermarket, bank, and hotel require information systems that are different and Unique. A systems analyst applies a technique called Business Process Modelling to Represent company operations and information requirements. A systems analyst works in an information technology based department. This person is Responsible for planning, analysing and implementing information systems. 1.1 Background of the Study Funeral homes arrange services in accordance with the wishes of surviving friends and families. The funeral home often takes care of the necessary paperwork, permits, and other details, such as making arrangements with the cemetery, and providing obituaries to the news media. Nova Funeral Homes, giving you the best service for the last journey of your love ones for over five decades is now in its new image. Nova Funeral is a duly accredited morgue of the Philippine National Police and the National Bureau of Investigation, aside from being an accredited with the Eternal Plans Inc., and the St. Peter Life Plan. If you are in the Almar-Zabarte area, you can use your...
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...MARCH 4, 2002 The Loewen Group, Inc. (Abridged) In March 1999, John Lacey and the management team at the Loewen Group, Inc., had to decide what course of action to take in light of the company's imminent financial difñculties. On January 22,1999, Lacey, a renowned turnaround specialist, was appointed chairman of Loewen, the second largest death care company in North America. Headquartered in Burnaby, British Columbia, Loewen owned over 1,100 funeral homes and more than 400 cemeteries in the U.S. and Canadá; it also owned 32 funeral homes in the United Kingdom. The company had come a long way since its modest beginnings in Canadá, where Ray Loewen, the founder (and, until recently, chairman and CEO), started out helpinghis father run the family funeral business in the late 1950s. During the last two decades, Loewen Group had grown explosively, mainly by acquiring small independent funeral homes and cemeteries in densely populated urban markets; in recent years the company had also acquired several large established funeral chains. Over the last five years alone, Consolidated revenues had grown by nearly 30 percent a year, on average, from $303 million to over $1.1 billion. Despite its impressive growth, the company faced a major financial crisis. It lost $599 million for 1998, compared to earning $43 million the previous year. Loewen's on-going acquisitions program had been aggressively ñnanced with debt. At year-end 1998, total debt stood at more than $2.3 billion—more...
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...September 21, 2013 TAX FILE MEMORANDUM FROM Latisha Gooley SUBJECT Peaceful Pastures Funeral Home, Incorporated prepaid income for services. Today I spoke with the owners of Peaceful Pastures Funeral Home Incorporated’s owners, with respect to their July 28, 2013 letter requesting tax assistance. Peaceful wishes to know if they could include their prepaid income in the year that the services were rendered. FACTS Peaceful Pastures is an accrual basis taxpayer who provides a full line of prepaid funeral services and sells goods related to those services to its clientele that will be provided to the customer when the customer becomes deceased. Peaceful Pastures goods and services are refundable upon the purchasers request, up until the purchaser uses the services. Peaceful Pastures wants help determining when they are to claim taxes for earnings in their prepaid program for their funeral home. ISSUE Does Peaceful Pastures Funeral Homes Inc. claim their prepaid income in the period in which it was received or can Peaceful Patures claim the income in the period in which the services are rendered? CONCLUSION Peaceful Pastures, reported the income correctly on their taxes the year that the services were rendered. Peaceful Pastures Funeral Homes Inc. must realize the income in the year that it receives prepaid income from a buyer and not in the year the goods and services are rendered. Therefore the IRS is correct and Peaceful may owe back taxes as well as penalties and interest...
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...In this paper I will provide a SWOT analysis of the A.A. Rayner Funeral Home of Chicago. In the analysis I will provide an analysis including strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. Strengths A.A. Rayner and Sons was established in 1947. Ahmed A. Raymer was a graduate of Prairie View University, Worsham College of Mortuary Science and John Marshall Law School. The A.A. Rayner Funeral home has a rich family history in Chicago and has been a staple in the African American community since its inception. The A. A. Rayner and Sons has 2 locations 318 E. 71 St. and 5911 W. Madison St. The business is currently managed by the third generation of the Rayner family. Its annual estimated revenue from each funeral home is $500,000 - $1,000,000. The Rayner’s were involved in historically high profile burials. Emmett Till, a young African American man who was killed in Mississippi and his and the late Mayor Harold Washington. A. A. Rayner Jr. was a pilot in the Air Force and one of the original Tuskegee Airmen. He was also elected to the Chicago city council to the 6th ward in 1967. “We are honored to have been able to serve our community, and we consider it a privilege and an important responsibility to offer our very best. A.A. Rayner & Sons leadership and commitment to affordable, ethical and professional service will continue for generations to come. “ The Rayners’ are one of the few funeral homes that provide services for recipients of public assistance. The Rayners’...
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