The
Of all the changes in the funeral scene over the last decades, easily the most significant is the emergence of monopolies in what the trade is pleased to call the “death care” industry. Of the three publicly traded major players – Service Corporation International [SCI], the Loewen Group, and Stewart Enterprises – SCI, incorporated in 1984, is the undisputed giant.
Robert Waltrip of SCI, Ray Loewen of the Loewen Group, and Charles Stewart of Stewart Enterprises, the head honchos of the Big Three of the corporate funeral world, have been pitted in a worldwide race to buy up cemeteries with integrated undertaking establishments. Known in the trade as combos, these have proven to be prodigious money mills.
The twin strategies that go far to account for SCI’s phenomenal success, both concepts entirely new to the unreal industry, are “clustering” and anonymity. Of the twenty-two thousand funeral homes in the United States, the vast majority are small operations doing somewhere between fifty and one hundred funerals a year. SCI entered this picture with the force of a hurricane, swept away the antiquated methods of the old-timers, and substituted “clustering,” the latest in streamlined mass production. Borrowing from the successful techniques of McDonald’s, where food preparation and management functions are centralized, SCI first buys up a carefully chosen selection of funeral homes, cemeteries, flower shops, and crematoria in a given metropolitan area. The funeral customer is totally unaware of the strategy of clustering because of the immensely successful SCI policy of anonymity.
The next step is to move the essential elements of the trade to a central depot. “Clustered” in this hive of activity are the hearses, limousines, utility cars, drivers, dispatchers, embalmers, and a spectrum of office workers form accountants to data processors, who are kept constantly busy servicing, at vast savings, the needs of a half dozen or ore erstwhile independent funeral homes. Needless to say, the savings obtained via the cluster approach are not passed on to the consumer. SCI prices have risen sharply, with a targeted increase of 30 percent. Prices of the Loewen Group mortuaries tend to parallel those of SCI.
Zoellick Comments on the Funeral Busines
http://www.heritage.org/Research/TradeandForeignAid/HL710.cfm
03 Jul 2001
In a June 2001 speech to the right-wing Heritage Foundation in
SERVICE CORPORATION INTERNATIONAL - SCI
Form 10-Q Filed: May 10, 2006
Over the long-term, we believe that our industry leadership, along with superior brand, reputation, financial strength and geographic reach, will result in expanded growth opportunities with the aging of the Baby Boom generation. During the short-term, we believe we can grow our existing businesses by centralization and standardization of our processes. This includes aligning pre-need and pricing strategies with customer segments and expanding customer segments in which we excel.
We believe we can expand operating and financial growth by replacing the industry’s traditional one-size-fits-all approach with an operating strategy that considers customers personal needs and preferences. Using this approach, we will tailor our product and service offerings based on four variables: convenience and location, religious and ethnic customs, quality and prestige, and price.
Nature of Operations
Service Corporation International (SCI or the Company) is a provider of deathcare products and services, with a network of funeral service locations and cemeteries primarily operating in the
Funeral service locations provide all professional services relating to at-need funerals, including the use of funeral facilities and motor vehicles, and preparation and embalming services. Funeral related merchandise (including caskets, burial vaults, cremation receptacles, flowers, and other ancillary products and services) is sold at funeral service locations. Certain funeral service locations contain crematoria. The Company also sells pre-need funeral services whereby a customer contractually agrees to the terms of a funeral to be performed in the future. The Company’s cemeteries provide cemetery property interment rights (including mausoleum spaces, lots, and lawn crypts) and sell cemetery related merchandise (including stone and bronze memorials, markers, and cremation memorialization products) and services (primarily merchandise installations and burial openings and closings). Cemetery items are sold on an at-need or pre-need basis. Personnel at cemeteries perform interment services and provide management and maintenance of cemetery grounds. Certain cemeteries operate crematoria, and certain cemeteries contain gardens specifically for the purpose of cremation memorialization.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8302476.stm
13 Oct 2009
It is a problem faced by everyone in the end or by their relatives left behind - finding a place to spend eternity.And in
In a ceremony relatives collect the ashes, picking up pieces of bone with chopsticks, and placing them in a ceramic urn. The remains are then buried, usually under a family tombstone. But in the high-rise graveyard, the urns are stored on shelves instead. One half of the building is a warehouse for the dead, filled from the ground floor to the shadows high above with row upon row of rectangular metal boxes.
