“Niche” Death Care appears to be continually growing

We finance caskets CLICK HERE and send it directly to the funeral home of your choice. Or go directly to the application HERE.

As I’ve told you before, I read the book Megatrends early in the 1980’s.  That book, written by John Naisbitt, enlightened me on how happenings of today’s world become trends and potentially “Megatrends” that can change society over time.  It also enlightened me that sometimes we can be fooled — some things that look like trends might be fads and fall away from universal acceptance as time goes on.

“Megatrends” had an incredible influence on my life.  I’ve used the thought process of “trends” in everything from how I look for public stocks to invest in to looking for trends in the funeral business — not only in disposition decisions — but on pricing options as well.  For instance, my sons were listening to Spotify and eating at Chipotle before I had even heard of the companies and their interest and fondness in those companies is why I invested in them on their way up.  And, in the funeral home business I moved to the trend of higher professional service pricing and lower merchandise pricing before most and that proved to be a smart idea too.

In the Death Care business there is no doubt that the biggest trend that became a megatrend over the past half-century was the choice of cremation over traditional burial as a disposition choice.  And, those companies that embraced the cremation trend in the 1970’s have, more often than not, increased their business size and profitability as cremation choice continued to grow.

Tom Anderson
Funeral Director Daily

So, is there a trend that could become a megatrend evident in today’s Death Care business?  I would say yes, and I would believe it is the trend of more individual choice or niche selections over the current disposition mainstream choices of either burial or cremation.  And, I think this “niche trend” is happening in all terms of the linear succesion of Death Care.  Disposition, ceremony, and memorialization.

What are some of these niches?

In Disposition I think that natural or green burial is growing. . . . I also think that there is an upward movement in alkaline hydrolysis and natural organic reduction (human composting).  I have a friend who operates a funeral home in New York City.  She recently told me “We are making great strides, receiving many more green burial pre-arrangement requests (with at- need steady too)”.

And, we recently published this article in Funeral Director Daily about alkaline-hydrolysis focused Endswell, located in North Carolina, which noted they had conducted 300 services in their first two years of operation allowing them to open a 2nd location.

Related — Recompose (Natural Organic Reduction) website

In Ceremony I am seeing a continual uptick in using non-traditional funeral venues for services.  And, what I call “Ceremony” companies like Kinwood or SendOff vying not only for funeral ceremonies but working to capture the contracted dispositions of the deceased also.

Or what about the idea of holding one’s funeral or memorial service (if you can call it that) before one has died?  There’s a company in Great Britain, Ceremonia, advocating just that.  Might this catch on?

Finally, in Memorialization I see many options that death care consumers will have over the tried-and-true option of burial (full body or cremation remains) in a cemetery with a monument declaring a life that has been lived.  There are a lot of options out there for this truly individual decision.  For instance, Better Place Forests made large investments in natural forests and a visit to their website will show testimonials that there are families that seem to be well pleased with their decision of purchasing memorial positions through them.

And, there are other options such as Parting Stone that seem to be growing also.

So, in our profession there are these emerging trends of “niche” choices that I see.  I’m also guessing that moving forward we will see more “niche” options present themselves to the Death Care consumer.  The question is, “Will these trends become megatrends and move the needle somewhat in decreasing the numbers of traditional burials, cremation, and traditional cemetery memorializations?”

Going back only 20 years, we lived in a country where over 90% of homes had landline telephone lines. . . . and we lived in a world where Netflix was delived on compact discs (CDs), not via streaming.

With those thoughts in mind, I would suggest that as you move forward with your Death Care business you look at options how you can partner with the growing “niche” businesses in Death Care to make sure that you don’t make a fatal mistake of missing a trend becoming a megatrend.

Disclaimer — The author of this article for Funeral Director Daily is a shareholder of Parting Stone.

More news from the world of Death Care:

Enter your e-mail below to join the 3,120 others who receive Funeral Director Daily articles daily:

“A servant’s attitude guided by Christ leads to a significant life”