Funeral Parlor Market

[Ron Profile Private messageWebsite]

Hi
I was wondering if anyone here that does this type of work is willing to share some inner details of the business. I made contact, in a roundabout way, and I can't find anyone locally who offers this type of service so I thought maybe there's an untapped market here? But since noone offers it maybe there isn't! Unfortunately I seem to be gun shy to take the first step epecially knowing the sensitivity of the situation. Any insights to this business would be truly appreciated.
I have so many questions I wouldn't know where to begin. Who's the contact? What would the pitch be? Turn around times? Pricing? Is it profitable? Do you make cookie cutter shows? Are you hired by the parlor or the "family"? How are photo's received? Knowing info on deceased? etc...etc...etc...
Any insight is appreciated?

[texan Profile Private message]

Hi Ron: (Regarding the Funeral Parlor Market--Dallas,TX)

I approached this market in the Dallas, Texas area and ran into a brick wall. The funeral inductry here, have been offering this type of service for over ten years.......I was very surprised to hear this.........

What they do is offer a power point presentation created by $10/Hour college students. I demoed my PSP presentation to two companies and they both agreed I had a far superior product.

Here's the problem: They offer the PPT show FREE if the client agrees to combine services......i.e. Flowers, casket, limo, etc............If the client declines then they SELL the presentation for $350 and almost EVERYONE buys it. They pay about $40/unit.

Although there are some 350 funeral parlors in the DFW metropolitan area "most" are owned by three large
conglomerates............

I talked directly to two owners..........I was both surprised and disappointed...........I decieded to pursue other markets.......i.e. real estate

Cheers

[tdew Profile Private message]

Everytime I go to a wake and see a picture collage made of cut up old pictures I want to do something about it. I thought about contacting the local funeral parlors to offer the service, but on thinking it through realized that most people don't have their old pictures in digital format, so pictures would have to be collected, scanned and put into a show in a very short time frame. A funeral home in Vero Beach, FL had the lovliest presentation, but I never followed up on it because of the time constraints. You would HAVE to be available at very short notice and I couldn't commit to that.

[PhotoMill Profile Private message]

Hi Richichi,

The answers you received to this point are universal. So many factors fall into place here. Namely, a reluctance on most funeral homes to get involved with this type of work. This reluctance is due in part to a severe lack of staff to look after the procedure. Trust me, it is very involved. I have been pursuing this for some time and the "brick walls" are definitely there.

From my standpoint, I have to deal with many hurdles. Distance, funeral home reluctance, competition from web based programs, family reluctance, fear of copyright issues (from both family and funeral home). The list goes on and on. I'm at the point now where I am looking to other venues.

My most recent video tribute was very well received and the comments were all positive but if you are going to go after this, remember that you will be dealing with family members who are under extreme duress. I had the slideshow posted here last week but took it down the next day. I decided that it was a little to "heavy" for the forum.

I'll add to this thread a little later with a list of some web based programs but the one that comes to mind immediately is one found at "www.mem.com"

...Steve

[dnmilikan]

Hi Ron,

I am not sure about the Phoenix, Arizona market but this is strictly a Mafiosa business here in Milano, Italy (yes they are alive and well here). The family runs the funeral homes and everything related to that market. In fact my friend and I were asked to leave the large municipal cemetery here because we were photographing on the grounds. Not intruding into anything other than the family business, if you know what I mean.

This should, one would think, be a no-brainer. People die all of the time...LOL

Good luck,
Donald Miller

[BarbaraC Profile Private messageWebsite]

Is it possible that, instead of doing memorials shown in funeral parlors, it might be more worthwhile to do "after-the-fact" shows, the kind done when memorial services occur quite a bit after a person's death? Sure, these kinds of services aren't the rule, but they certainly occur often enough. Sometimes it's because a large family can't make it to the funeral on such short notice, and sometimes it's because the funeral was private and the memorial service occurs quite a bit after. Separate from this is the fact that long after a death, people find they suddenly want something by which to remember the person.

All the above said, I've no idea how one would get into this kind of business, but it might be an avenue to pursue if you can just figure out how to do it.

Barbara

[trulytango Profile Private message]

Any insights to this business would be truly appreciated.
I have so many questions I wouldn't know where to begin. Who's the contact? What would the pitch be? Turn around times? Pricing? Is it profitable? Do you make cookie cutter shows? Are you hired by the parlor or the "family"? How are photo's received? Knowing info on deceased? etc...etc...etc...
Any insight is appreciated?

Hi there

Take a look at this thread:
http://proshowenthusiasts.com/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=1130

Towards the end of the discussion you'll find a link to site that helped someone get a foothold in this particular market.

Iris

[PhotoMill Profile Private message]

Is it possible that, instead of doing memorials shown in funeral parlors, it might be more worthwhile to do "after-the-fact" shows, the kind done when memorial services occur quite a bit after a person's death? Sure, these kinds of services aren't the rule, but they certainly occur often enough. Sometimes it's because a large family can't make it to the funeral on such short notice, and sometimes it's because the funeral was private and the memorial service occurs quite a bit after. Separate from this is the fact that long after a death, people find they suddenly want something by which to remember the person.

All the above said, I've no idea how one would get into this kind of business, but it might be an avenue to pursue if you can just figure out how to do it.

Barbara

Absolutely right on Barbara. In fact, I am going through this procedure with a customer right now. And the spin offs are just starting to become apparent. In my own case, I was the "wedding photographer" and became quite involved with the bride and groom through all aspects of the wedding. When the disaster hit less than 3 weeks later, I was called immediately to assist with the funeral memorial. Needed first was a portrait shot of the deceased which had to be to the newspaper by 11:00am. (It was 10:00am when I got the call) Next came the request to make a DVD for 11:00am the next morning. No problem I thought. The wedding photos I already had on file but the work started when I was asked to use more family photos for "other than wedding" memories. Not a problem. However, when I went to the families home to get the pictures, I was given a disk with about 50 scans on it and an envelope with about 30 prints. Scanning the prints was no problem. When I put the CD in my computer to grab the rest, I found that the scans were all done wrong and were unusable. It's now 8:00pm. Called the family contact and explained the situation and was asked to come to her home and get the photos that were scanned originally. Now, "I" had to scan them. By 2:30am I was so tired that I grabbed 2 hours of sleep and to make a long story short, I arrived at the funeral home at 10:55am. Not bad ... 5 minutes to spare. At this point, I must say that it was from the ease of use that PSG gives that I did complete the job. During this event, I did realize something in that I will never accept scans from a customer again. I get the prints to scan myself or it's a no-go. The family thought they were helping me but in fact it was quite the opposite. If nothing else, I did learn something from this event.

Anyway, as I said, the "after the fact" work is starting to roll in and that makes it all worth while.

...Steve

[Ron Profile Private messageWebsite]

Hi Guys
I thank you all for your input as always. You guys seem to be in sync that this type of work will probably be a tuff market to crack into. Plus I really didn't want to get involved with the families directly during their immediate mourning, was looking for all to go thru the funeral director.

Steve & Texan I appreciate your thoughts & comments.
Iris I thank you for your link - I found it very informative.
Janice thanks for the email with all your thoughts.
Barbra your thought is excellent. I will ponder the possibilities.

I'm having difficulty breaking into markets, especially school sports & events which I feel is a big market, Maybe I'll try the local camps here too.

Now regarding Don's point... I wrote and deleted my comments at least 5 times and decided to send him a pm regarding his "Mafiosa" comments as this thread is not the proper place.

[anubis121280]

Hi richichi,

Well I am a funeral Director and embalmer, in a small town in east texas. I work for a family owned firm, and we do about 180 calls a year, of those about 50% take advantage of our free memorial videos. I do them myself here(during work hours) using Producer, The major funeral home corps. are probably not going to outsource there's to an independent person, but if you could find some of the independent f.h. they might be willing to let you. We previously outsourced ours to an individual, but we stopped because I wanted to try it, but mainly because he wasnt really as concerned about the family or making it pesonal as we wanted for our families. Also it is sometimes difficult to get the family of the deceased to co-operate in a timely manner, we play our tributes at the visitation and leading up to the funeral ceremony itself, and sometimes I dont get pictures until 6 hours before visitation. So that is something you would have to consider, having to work around the time restraints that grieving folks can sometimes unintentionally cause because of waiting on a sister to bring one photo from 75 miles away. I do forty pics for free(and it is not packaged in anything. Even if a fmily wants a direct cremation no service we will make a memorial for them. I charge two dollars a pic after the free forty, and twenty bucks for addtl copies, w/ a cover and dvd lightscribed. The family's wont usually do them if it feels like its going to be a hassle to gather the photos and get them back too the funeral home in a timely manner. But this market has a lot of old time undertakers in it that have no clue how to go about getting this done for their families, but if you can make it something that they dont have to worry about, alot of places want to offer it but only if it adds to their level of service not if it causes a potential problem w/ families, due to someone telling them if they pics arent here in 20mins their not getting a memorial( obviously their are times when it cant be helped but its rare.) SO I say go for it. Dont be shy with funeral directors( we think a little differently about this whole death thing) most good f.d's are eager to add services that can set them apart in a more and more competitive market.

[JaniceMBrown Profile Private messageWebsiteYIM]

WOW Anubis your reply sounds like an echo of what I said in my email to Ron. 90% or better of our Funeral Homes here in Oklahoma have become very coporate. Seems mostly owned by this Dignity Bunch. They use a web interface to produce some God Awfull slide show that looks the same from one to the next. Very sad, BUT, you are right, good FD's will go the extra step just to have that WOW factor setting them apart. That is the type of FH that I do work for. I actually have a competitor doing business with the same FH but my product sells over hers because it is a step above in that hers are templates of a scrapbook them and the same for each and every video.

I am, at this point, working on getting my website set to accept uploads so that I can reach out to FH's in small towns a distance from me that have not yet been bought by the big corporate guys. Nice to know you are on here Anubis. Thanks for the input.
Janice

[trulytango Profile Private message]

Hi there

It's getting the same over here in the UK. All the small funeral homes are getting sucked under the umbrella of one or two majors - and although they themselves are introducing such services, the products rank pretty low in creativity, from what I have seen.

Iris

[Ron Profile Private messageWebsite]

Anubis I thank you for the inner insight, I really appreciate it.
Janis your email was also very informative, I thank you for your insider information as well.

[gpsmikey Profile Private message]

I can't help it -- every time I read that title, I have visions of someone in the funeral parlor with a latte cart yelling "slide shows, get your slide shows here !! "

mikey

[JaniceMBrown Profile Private messageWebsiteYIM]

OH MIKEY!! That is so bad!!! lol