What does it take to open a funeral home?

It is a sector with very high potential but it is not so easy to be able to start a business like this. It is necessary to develop a highly professional and at the same time sensitive side.

It is not about selling simple goods and services but about helping people in a difficult moment of their existence. When a loved one passes away, it is essential that precise operations are carried out in the shortest possible time.

The funeral agency takes care of the handling of the first practices and intervenes with punctuality and professionalism to better organize a funeral.

We therefore need to know our work environment perfectly, all the bureaucratic aspects to be followed as well as the established roles and tasks cremation funeral plans.

A Look At The Funeral Home Industry Today

Funeral services represent a stable column of the economy: the number of deaths in Italy has increased to about 650 thousand units a year, which is why we are talking about a real business of over 1.8 billion euros that provides work to about 25 thousand direct employees and the same number in related industries. Despite everything, this sector is struggling with the same problems as other sectors:

• lower purchasing power;
• competition from low-cost companies;
• local regulations not aligned.

A sector that has 6,000 funeral homes, double those surveyed 15 years ago but which is recording a  decline in turnover , both because families spend less on honoring the deceased, cutting not so much services as supplies (coffins and low cost urns), and because the practice of cremation is spreading more and more   (much cheaper than the classic burial).

Cremation is growing in Italy at a rate of more than + 10% a year and is the option chosen today for one in four funerals (with peaks of 80%), throughout the Lombardy region, and the minimum (2.5 % of deaths) in Sicily. The business of secular ceremonies and funeral houses is also developing, which did not exist until a few years ago, today about 300 active (all concentrated in the North).

There is a growing demand for secular farewell spaces to allow relatives and acquaintances to stay close to the deceased before the final farewell and there is a demand for new services of thanato practice and embalming, as well as for complete packages ” turnkey ”, because the bereaved family wants to face the trauma, not the bureaucracy.