What Funeral Industry Websites I Watch Now

If you don’t keep up with Connecting Directors, I question whether you’re really connected to this industry.  When Ryan, the site’s prime mover, first contacted me for help getting a press release in order, I wasn’t sure about his chances.  Running a daily site for any industry requires a lot of stamina, but putting out interesting stuff for funeral directors every 24 hours is an even tougher task.

Why?  You know why: because funeral directors are so busy with all the other things in their life that getting them to read a blog or website every day or even once a week is a very difficult task.  And Ryan has done that, day in and day out for several years now.

I say this because I certainly haven’t been as active as in past years.  This blog sits silent most days.  Other times, I begin to write and find that I don’t have much left to say.  The tank’s not empty, not exactly.  It’s just that I’ve already talked about all the topics that I know much about.  I mean, how many more times can I tell you to educate your community about cremation?  If you’re a regular reader and you haven’t been pursuaded, then you are probably beyond my grasp.

It all started when I stopped working in a funeral home.  I don’t have the daily interaction with grieving people or the task of dressing and casketing remains.  I make cot covers now.  Yes, they’re really good ones, and the customers (funeral directors) who buy them are on the frontlines of the industry,  but I’m not “hands-on” anymore.  And that makes it difficult for me to spout my opinion.

So I find myself reading a lot of other peoples’ work.  I’m following the stories on Connecting Directors.  I watch how Brian Hanner at Geib Funeral Homes interacts with his clientele, I have paid special attention to Dale Clock’s insights and commented (probably too often) on his blog.

I will still post here, as I’m doing today, but please consider getting your regular “industry news” from sources like the ones I’ve suggested.

 

Must-Read Posts from 2010

I didn’t write a lot for 2010, so here are the three posts I think you should take a look at:

Our Cot Cover Business Ends 2009 Better Than 2008

Is OGR Having Trouble Filling Annual Expo?

Overheard at a Visitation – 2010 Edition

Will 2011 be better?  Who’s to say?

 

Hearse License Plates

See this car and 19 other License Plates to Die For.

Simply Plates (via Neatorama)

 

2010 NFDA Convention Review Part 2

Where did I leave off? 

Oh yes, we were wandering Bourbon Street, trying to find some decent souvenirs to take home.  My companion for this trip, my friend Kim, was looking for a voodoo doll for her husband.  Not a voodoo doll that she would use on her husband, but one for him as a gift.

The next day was show day, so we got a good night’s sleep (after climbing into the ridiculously tall beds.  Seriously, there was a stepstool so you could reach the top of the mattress) and were ready to head over to the convention center the next day.

You should know that I’m writing this two months after the show ended, so my exact memories might be a little hazy.  Okay, a lot hazy.  But hopefully I can give you the general idea of what happened and the big benefits we gained and the things we learned.

Our first day on the floor was made eventful by way of an unexpected surprise:  during one of the morning workshops, when asked what advances individuals had made in their business, a funeral director stood up and told the audience that the single best purchase he’d made in recent years was buying cot covers from Final Embrace and that the company was at the show this year.

During the first two hours of the show, we fielded questions and orders from at least twenty funeral directors who had attended the workshop and were open to our sales pitch. 

So we send a big “thank you!” to the funeral director who spoke so highly of us and our product.

The rest of our day went well, boosted by the immediate interest generated by the workshop.  As the day winded down, I noted that we were already a third of the way toward our goal.  I usually set a goal before each show, based upon dollars spent to exhibit and previous year totals.  The three NFDA Expos prior looked like this:

2007 Las Vegas:  40 cover goal, 42 covers sold
2008 Orlando :  100 covers goal, 153 covers sold
2009 Boston:  100 covers goal, 103 covers sold

So I set another 100 cover goal.  My trip to New Orleans was not as expensive as Boston, so setting a similar goal was less about cost and more about expectations.  On day one, we sold more than 33 covers, so we were well on the way.

One of my biggest concerns about going to our 4th NFDA show in a row was that we would eventually run out of funeral directors who had never seen us and would have to rely on reorders and sales of new products to keep up with our goals for the show.

We finally began a full-on push to sell our dressing table skirts at this show, so it was good to see that many people were interested in what new items we had and were willing to order.

I am convinced that, had we not offered dressing table skirts this year, we would have been far off our goal and probably not sold more than 50 covers.

The second day was even more successful, so that we only need five orders on the last day to reach the goal.

15 items sold on the last day helped us break our goal and allowed us to finish with 110 items for the three day event.  Of those, more than 30 were dressing table skirts.  A number of those skirt systems went to funeral directors who had ordered from us before and who would not have visited our booth if we hadn’t let them know that we had something new to offer.

Here’s a final breakdown of our costs:

ITEM	COST
Booth	$   2,500
Lodging	$     900
Food	$     300
Fuel	$     200
Misc.	$     100
TOTAL:	$   4,000

Normally, I would budget $50 per cover/skirt system for this kind of marketing, meaning we needed to sell 80 covers/skirt systems to pay for the show.  Fortunately, selling 30 more items meant that our per item cost to exhibit was less than $37.

When I look back over this show, I think I will remember it as the show that re-emphasized our need to develop other products.  It will also be the show when people started to see that we are “here to stay,” and it’s the show where I finally started to feel like we know what we’re doing at conventions.

Course, next year I’ll probably change it all up.  Who knows.  Chicago 2011 is a long way off!

 

2010 NFDA Convention Review Part 1

October 2010 saw the arrival of the NFDA Convention and Expo to the city of New Orleans.  This was our fourth year attending as a vendor.  Below, you will find my overall impressions of the event and some insights into how the convention benefited us.

I hadn’t been back to New Orleans since Katrina hit the city in 2005.  My only pre-hurricane visit, during a Carnival cruise that also stopped in Grand Cayman and Cozumel, had only lasted a few hours, with our entire experience restricted to the French Quarter and the cruise terminal.

So like many Americans, my impression of New Orleans was tourism and, thanks to news reports, flooding.

On the Saturday before the show, we drove from our base in Florida to Slidell, Louisiana.  The drive took just over nine hours and brought us within 30 miles of downtown New Orleans.  We crashed at a recently-built Best Western, which was beautifully-appointed and very clean.  (Good rule of thumb when picking a cheap hotel:  the name doesn’t matter so much as when the building was erected.  An old Radisson is probably going to be less pleasant than a really new Red Roof Inn.)

We got up Sunday morning, had a nice hot breakfast and drove into New Orleans.  As we crossed the low bridge into the outskirts, we started to see signs of hurricane damage.  Second floor apartments burned out, abandoned houses with broken windows, signs for water damage experts.  It wasn’t so much a wasteland – from what we could see from the highway – as much as it was clearly an area that was still trying to recover.

Of course, the downtown areas where the money is made was in better shape.  Our hotel, which was one block from the convention center, was located in a converted warehouse.  Here’s a picture of our room, with it’s 16-foot ceilings:

We spent Sunday morning setting up our booth in the convention center.  We had a great location, just steps off the main aisle with only a large, see-through booth in our way.  We’ve gotten good enough at setting up the booth that it took us less than two hours to go from bare, concrete floors to this:

The show itself didn’t start until Monday afternoon, so we had an opportunity to explore the city and had a great time in the French Quarter.  We had an awesome lunch (try a muffaletta sandwich, unless you absolutely hate olives) and explored the area.  We listened as a street band played an unbelievable set of blues and jazz music while the lead singer’s kid slept on a reclining lawn chair nearby.  We dropped some much-deserved cash in their donation jar (and we weren’t the only ones – these people sounded amazing!).

Part Two later.

 

Hey, That’s My Booth!

A recent article in “The Vancouver Sun” newspaper discusses the 2010 NFDA convention and even mentions our quilted cot covers.  (Here’s a link to the article)

Even better, the photo they use has our booth SMACK DAB IN THE MIDDLE!

I’ve circled our booth in the photo above.  Check out the eight people around our booth, learning about our covers.  This must have been during one of our super-busy times when there was barely any room for visitors in our little space.

I chatted with this reporter for a few minutes between customers and she was very kind and interested in the products.  I finally had to cut our conversation short because of so much interest in what we had to offer.  I’m glad to see she took our conversation to heart and added us to her piece.

The article is a nice “outsider’s” look at our industry.  I’m glad she stopped to talk to us.

 

Another Customer Testimonial

 

2010 NFDA Expo Videos

I’ve been hard at work getting ready for the 2010 NFDA Expo in New Orleans.  That means getting our booth cleaned up, making sure product is boxed up, designing brochures and packing my suitcase.

It also means getting my little Flip video camera charged so I can shoot some “man on the street” videos for NFDA’s website.  Here’s what one looks like:

Yesterday, Andy Werner, my good friend at NFDA headquarters, sent out an email detailing a special NFDA package that exhibitors can take advantage of that will boost their online presence with NFDA and generate some great visibility for their company.

For just $650, a company can get a year’s worth of online exposure to NFDA members.  First, the company gets a featured listing on the NFDA Biz Exchange website.  Now, there are already 12 companies who have that kind of listing, so to make it even more attractive, we will also produce a “product demonstration” or “service interview” video, shot by me, to the listing.

Basically, if you decide to invest in this kind of exposure, Andy will add your company to the featured area of the NFDA website.  Then, I’ll set up a time to see you at the NFDA Expo (before or after show hours) and film a 1-2 minute interview with you or one of your representatives.  We’ll talk about what your company does.  You can even show off product and point out why your widget is better than others.  We’ll keep it positive, so no trash-talking your competitors, but the object is to give people who haven’t come to the expo or may be watching in six months an “expo-eye” view of your booth and product.  We’ll end by telling people how to find your product.

If you’re spending thousands of dollars to exhibit at this show, you know the importance of being seen at this kind of industry event and the great selling opportunities that the NFDA Expo offers.  My company, which sells quilted cot covers, writes almost 20% of our annual business at this show. 

The next best thing to being there is watching a video of it.  Imagine being able to “sell” your product to tens of thousands of NFDA site visitors who didn’t get to see you at the convention.

Want to know more?  Already have a featured listing on the NFDA site and want to add the video?

For more information, please contact Andrew Werner at 262-814-1550 or awerner@nfda.org.

 

“Pressed for Time”

Always wanted to “rock on” after death?  Why not have your cremated remains pressed into vinyl records?

The company, And Vinyly, supposedly makes records from cremated remains.

Check out their website at:  http://www.andvinyly.com/

According to their materials, a complete custom pressing, with music you provide, will cost about two thousand pounds ($3074.68 at current conversion rates) for about 30 of the vinyl discs.

via BoingBoing

 

Vintage Hearse of the Day #1

From the website, Jalopnik, a vintage wood-carved hearse from Argentina:

Link to Jalopnik article.

 

2010 IFDF Conference & Expo

In mid-July, I packed up the Prius and headed to Tampa for the 2010 Independent Funeral Directors of Florida conference and expo.

This was our fourth year attending the show, so I didn’t know what kind of response we would get.  Here were my major questions:

Would our customers need any more covers? 
Would there be any new customers left for us to sell?
How would our new dressing table skirt systems be received?
Would we sell any dressing table skirt systems?

I left my facility on the morning of the event.  Exhibitors would be allowed to begin loading at noon, with the doors of the hall opening for visitors at 5:00 pm that evening.  The trip to the convention center took about two hours, allowing me to arrive just as they opened the loading dock for exhibitors to begin setting up.

Because I registered late for the show – hadn’t decided by mid-June if we’d attend again – I did not have the best choice of booth space.  In fact, the organizers had sold so many spots that the only space left was in the lobby near the registration area.  I was concerned about this setup, but I convinced myself that we’d still see everyone, even if we had to work extra hard to get them to hang out with us outside of all the main action.  I was beginning to rethink this strategy at the end of the first session.

Basic tenant of trade show booth placement:  don’t be too far away from the main action.  In fact, I would rather have been in the hall on a far wall in the corner than in the lobby.  Why?  Because everyone rushed past the eight booths in the lobby so they could get into the exhibit hall, which, incidentally, was the location of all the food, the bar and their friends.

So the typical attendee spent an hour or two in the exhibit hall, shooting the breeze with his friends, until his wife says, “Let’s go,” and he moves to leave.  By this time, he’s disengaged himself from the trade show, and just as he has closed his mind to looking at any more products, he walks out the door and sees 8 more booths. 

Needless to say, most of these guys were not going to stop to talk to any of us.

Our first day was very slow, with very few people talking with us.  The exhibit hall was rocking, but the exhibitors in the lobby were starting to wonder why they had paid the same amount as the people in the larger room.

We ended the evening with no sales.  First convention I’ve ever done where we sold NOTHING during a session.  As you might imagine, I was concerned and, if I’m truthful, a bit depressed about it.

It’s hard enough to risk hundreds or thousands of dollars and days away from your business to generate sales, but spending money and producing nothing is terribly discouraging.

(NOTE:  This post has been hard to write, since I haven’t been posting here regularly.  Sorry for the crappy writing.  Hopefully it will improve as I “up” my writing frequency.)

Luckily, I didn’t spend lots of money on a hotel room, since my sister and sister-in-law live in Tampa.  After a short drive and a “healthy” double-quarter-pounder meal (supersized, of course), I arrived at my sister’s house and crashed for the night.

The event started again the next morning and our results were better.  First, the organizers, to their credit, moved the desserts for lunch to the lobby, giving the attendees a reason to visit us after they finished their lunch.  Second, the day was less rushed, with visitors having more time to chat with vendors. 

Fortunately, several of my old customers stopped by to see what’s new and we showed off our new dressing table skirt system.  Orders started coming slowly, with our first being to a funeral director who had seen our product but held off because he had questions about durability.

As the day went on, we slowly added orders.  By the close of business and the end of the show, we had written more orders than the previous year.  I breathed a pretty big sigh of relief and started packing up to head home.

Here’s how the show finances ended:

Booth:  $375
Fuel:  $25
Food:  $50
Misc.:  $50

TOTAL EXPENSES:  $500
TOTAL SALES:  $2000 (10 items)

Typically, I budget $50 for trade show marketing from each item I sell.  So, spending $500 to attend the show meant I needed to sell 10 items.  Which we did (barely).

For contrast, the last IFDF show we attended (IFDF 2009 Wrap-Up) cost $242, meaning we’d have to sell 5 covers to meet the budget.  Of course, I received a complimentary booth for that show, which, had I been required to pay the full cost, would have made our expenses more than $600 and meant we needed to sell 12 covers.

We sold 11 items at the 2009 IFDF show and 10 this year.  I think we’re staying on track with IFDF.  And I can’t stop going to this show, since it’s usually in my backyard (next year?  Orlando) and I know the funeral directors so well.

As for the answers to those questions?  Here we go:

Would our customers need any more covers?
More than half of our sales were to customers who had ordered before.

Would there be any new customers left for us to sell?
We did, indeed, meet two new customers who were excited to try our products.

How would our new dressing table skirt systems be received?
Our previous customers loved the skirts and ordered right away.  They even ordered additional covers to match.

Would we sell any dressing table skirt systems?
We sold two systems, with two more orders coming in the next weeks following the event.

In all, it was a good event, despite the near heart-attack the first day’s response gave me.

 

Overheard at a Visitation – 2010 Edition

Recently attended a visitation followed by a service at one of the local funeral homes.  The deceased was to be cremated, but the family saw the value in having his body present for viewing and a service.

As I was leaving, I chatted with the funeral director and complimented him on the service.  I even teased him that having to work such a late services (went until almost 9 pm) is hard on his own family.  Then he said something that reminded me how much change the trend toward cremation has brought to the industry.  He said:

“I used to spend four nights a week on the visitation team.  Now, we’re lucky if we can convince people to see the body before cremation.”

We chatted some more.  Turns out he misses how often he used to stand for visitations.  He wishes he had more visitations and he knows that educating his public is the only way to encourage more viewings in the future.

“My staff presents all the options and we tell families that we truly believe that some kind of viewing is beneficial for their friends and loved ones, but these economic times are really affecting my customers,” he shared.

At the end of the day, his bottom line is affected also.  Having a big funeral home with multiple viewing rooms and state-of-the-art technology isn’t cheap.  At the same time, he is worried that if direct cremation with no viewing becomes the norm, more than just the funeral industry will be damaged; he believes that the basic need to “say goodbye” is harmed, even if people, driven by the economics of it all, don’t realize what they’re losing.

I agree with him.  And while I have an awfully pessimistic view of the future of the industry, I think there’s a lot individual funeral directors can do to educate their community.  I just wish I had the answer to fix the problem.

 

Georgia Funeral Expo 2010

In early March, we loaded up the convention Prius (I traded the convention wagon for one with better gas mileage after I figured out that everything would fit in the new car) and headed to Atlanta for a chance to sell our quilted cot covers and a new item, our dressing table skirts, to the gathered funeral directors.

We left around 11:00 am on Sunday, February 28th, with a plan to hit I-75 by noon.  As my traveling companions know, my favorite fast food places are Chipotle and Zaxby’s.  As luck would have it, there’s a new Zaxby’s at I-75 near Ocala, Florida, so we pulled in and split a chicken finger plate (they make awesome chicken).

On the road again by 12:30, we spun up the Prius (0-60 in less than 15 seconds!) and headed toward the bright lights of Atlanta.

We dropped our bags in the hotel room by 6:00 pm – the Prius takes a while to get to cruising speed but it doesn’t mind keeping up with traffic once it gets there – and decided on dinner.  If you remember my last few trips through Atlanta, you’ll know that my favorite restaurant in the state of Georgia is Pappasito’s Cantina (2009 Georgia Expo Day 2 and Results).

My fellow roadtripper, Robin Richter, who went with me to the 2007 NFDA Convention in Vegas (Robin Richter Shares “My Experience at the NFDA Convention”), had never been to Pappasito’s, which made it all the more enjoyable for me to share the great place with her.  She called her husband afterward to tell him that if they got close to Atlanta again, they had better stop at Pappasito’s!

The expo wasn’t scheduled to start until Monday at Noon, so I was happy to get into town a day early and rest before the big two-day event.  I prefer to have everything set up the day before, but the Georgia Railway Depot is easy to access and I new that setup would only take about 1.5 hours.  We got finished early and had a delicious breakfast at the Waffle House at Underground Atlanta.

I’ll share more info soon about how many covers we sold and what our expenses looked like.  In the meantime, here’s a picture of our booth:

 

Art of Mourning by Hayden Peters

My favorite blog, Boing Boing, featured the collection of Hayden Peters, who runs a site called Art of Mourning.

In an interview with Collectors Weekly, Historian and Collector Hayden Peters charts the evolution of mourning jewelry from the 16th century through its most prolific period during the reign of Queen Victoria.

Here’s an excerpt from their interview:

Collectors Weekly:  So, just to be clear, is mourning jewelry considered a type of funeralia?

This Victorian hairwork bracelet featured a weave that stretched to fit the wearer. The clasp is neo-Rococo. 

Peters:  Yes. Some pieces are obviously made with the funeral in mind. In the 16th century, it wasn’t unheard of to leave an allocation in your will for the construction of mourning jewelry to be given to the loved ones at the funeral. To me that’s funeralia. That’s an accessory of mourning and part of the pomp and showiness of the funeral itself.

There were other things, though, that may be considered mourning but not funeralia. For example, I don’t consider the neoclassical stuff to be real funeralia, but it all falls under that umbrella. Funeralia, itself, is another world. You have the actual cemetery, the burial, and God knows what. It has so many facets. I think the jewelry fits in there in some way.

Read the full interview here.

Check out Peters’ site, the Art of Mourning, here.

 

Great Site: Oddly Specific

Here’s a few pictures submitted to Oddly Specific, which highlights some interesting and, occasionally unintended, comedy in signage:

 

Video from the 2010 SCFDA Expo

 

Is OGR Having Trouble Filling Annual Expo?

Order of the Golden Rule (OGR) is a trade organization of independent funeral homes.  Here’s how they describe themselves:

Founded in 1928, OGR’s mission is to make independent funeral homes exceptional. We do this by building and supporting member interaction, information exchange and encourating professional business development through a wide range of programs, services and resources.

OGR also negotiates discounts for their members with various industry suppliers.  I recently received an email from a company that is a Golden Services Group supplier (OGR’s designation for companies that participate in their discount program).  This email was sent to many GSG suppliers, including our company, because we currently offer a discount through the program.  Here’s the text:

Has anyone else read the last sentence of the paragraph that I’ve copied from the OGR’s email?  I’ve written Connie and Diane an email as I think this goes against the commitment that we’ve made over the years to OGR as being a representative in our respective product offerings.  If all competitors are allowed to attend, the distinction as a GSG Supplier is gone.
 
EXCERPT FROM OGR’S EMAIL:  “As a GSG Member, you have the first option to select a tabletop in this year’s showcase. Please make your reservation using the Supplier Showcase Registration Form. Also included is a floor plan to make your choices, preliminary conference schedule and other details about the showcase. After February 26, OGR will open this year’s showcase to all prospective industry suppliers.”

In effect, the writer is concerned that opening the show to competitors hurts the GSG supplier that has faithfully supplied a great discount to members for several years.  I tend to agree with the writer and voiced as much in a reply.

Then, OGR wrote eveyone to clarify the issue.  Here’s a snippet from their email:

The practice of opening up the Supplier Showcase to non-GSG suppliers was started last year at OGR’s Annual Conference in Nashville. Last year GSG suppliers had first option to purchase a tabletop. We had 5 new companies exhibit who were not in the GSG group because they paid to exhibit in the space that GSG suppliers did not purchase. Again this year, GSG suppliers will be given preferred placement, along with special signage recognizing their company as a member of GSG.
 
There are 60 GSG supplier members to fill the 35 tabletop exhibits at this year’s conference.  Your commitment to participate in the showcase and provide options for the products and services our members ask for and need is essential. Providing the space and related events for a Supplier Showcase is a costly and involved endeavor on the part of any association, but it is one that allows OGR members the opportunity to explore new products that will help them be better at what they do as funeral professionals. Our role is to help make them and their businesses exceptional. Your support of the Supplier Showcase is also toward that end.

So here’s my response:

Ms. Haymes:

It is unfortunate that you are unable to get even 35 of the 60 suppliers to exhibit at the show and, therefore, need to open the expo to outside companies.

 Perhaps you’d find it beneficial to have the perspective of one of GSG suppliers about this situation?  If so, here’s my take.

 

Our company gives a great discount (15%) to your members.  I’m also required to pay a percentage to GSG for the pleasure of selling to your members. 

 

In return, you occasionally mention my products to your members through the magazine, your annual resource book and in faxes and emails.

 

I’m glad that this has been a percentage arrangement, because if I were required to pay you a flat fee every year, I’d have ended our relationship after the first year.

 

How much business do I get from OGR members?  Less than 1% of my annual sales come from your group. 

 

As a marketing plan, being active in OGR has done little for my business.  Your magazine ad rates are comparable to other trade publications, but your distribution is MUCH, MUCH less.  I can’t offer a “hurry, sale ends soon!” call to action in your magazine because your members already get a substantial discount.

 

We plan our trade show attendance by factoring things like cost, location and attendance.  Frankly, even a simple review of your show tells me that I can’t make my money back.  Consider, first, the cost of travel.  Two of us attending will cost $850 for travel (air, hotel, car) if we stay in the cheapest place and drive the economy car.  Then, we’ll have to pay $749 for the first person and $450 for the second to attend the show.  Factor in meals ($100 if we stick with fast food and IHOP) and we’re over $2000 without putting gas in the rental or other incidental costs.

 

All that to reach a few hundred OGR members from behind a 6′ table for less than 1 hour of uninterrupted time on Friday and during a 90 minute lunch on Saturday.

 

To contrast, I recently spent half that amount to get five hours of uninterrupted time with over 400 funeral directors in South Carolina.  And I had a real 10′x10′ booth.  The booth itself costs me less than $600.  And the show planners quickly filled every space.

 

I don’t mind paying for high-quality leads.  I spend thousands to exhibit at the NFDA show each year.  But I expect value for my dollar, which means space, uninterrupted time and adequate foot traffic.

 

Right now, your show’s numbers don’t cut it, so I won’t be exhibiting.

 

But I like OGR.  I have good friends who are members.  I think you are trying to do good work.  It’s just not beneficial to your suppliers (at least this one) right now.

 

Best of luck in the future.

I’ve got issues with a few suggestions they make in their email.  In the second paragraph, there’s an attempt to shift blame with the line “your commitment…is essential.”  Then, an explanation of their inflated prices by claiming that “Providing the space and related events for a Supplier Showcase is a costly and involved endeavor,” while ignoring the basic math involved here.

They’re charging a minimum of $749 for one person to exhibit at a 6-foot table.  Multiply that by 35 spaces and you have over $26,000 in fees.  Imagine, then, if half the exhibitors bring a second person.  At $450 for an additional attendee, there’s an additional $8000.

I’m sure they’ve reserved a nice room for the showcase, but did it cost between $26,000 and $34,000 for three days?

The number one reason we’re not attending?  It’s extremely overpriced.  Like, ridiculously overpriced.

But surely there’s a great opportunity to interact with OGR members and sell lots of product, right?  Here’s what the online schedule shows:

Friday, April 23rd
1:55 – 2:55 pm   Diversity Panel

2:55 – 3:45 pm   Break/Supplier Showcase

3:45 – 4:45 pm   Concurrent Sessions

5:00 – 6:00 pm  Happy Hour/Scholarship Drive

Saturday, April 24th
11:15 – 12:30 pm  OGR Annual Meeting and Officer Installation
12:30 – 2:00 pm   Lunch/Supplier Showcase

2:00 – 3:00 pm  Concurrent Sessions
2:30 pm  Supplier Showcase Closes

That’s 50 minutes of scheduled time on Friday and 90 minutes on Saturday.

A good expo adds content and value to the attendees.  A minimal entry fee, in the form of conference fees for funeral directors and exhibit fees for vendors, pays for the space and services required.  In a perfect world, the showcase charges just enough to suppliers to break even.   

I feel that the amount OGR is charging to vendors is far too much.  As a supplier, I don’t mind paying my fair share.  But I will not attend shows that require me to pay everyone elses share, as well.

 

African Heritage Cot Cover

We’ve shown this cover off at conventions, but haven’t gotten much response.  Still, I like to look of it and plan to have it available at the next conventions we attend.  What do you think of it?  Too specific?

 

South Carolina Expo Successful! Georgia’s Next.

It’s been a whirlwind around here lately, with planning for two conventions and a monster opening month for 2010.  Doing all of it leaves little time for talking about all that we’re doing!

We had our best January ever, with the combo of January-February shaping up to the be the best two month period in our history, outside of a national convention.

Helping out our February numbers has been our trip to the South Carolina Funeral Directors Association Expo, held in Columbia on Tuesday, February 2nd and Wednesday, February 3rd.

The EXPO, which featured a wide range of vendors, attracted a great crowd of funeral directors from South Carolina and a few from neighboring states.  I even saw Bill Wappner, current NFDA President and one of our customers from Ohio.

We entered the show with a goal to sell 20 cot covers.  Our goals, which help us measure success during and after the show, are based upon our expenses for the event and the expected turnout.  I normally budget $50 per cover sold toward the cost of attending.

While I initially planned on spending about $1000 to attend the EXPO, our final numbers look like this:

BOOTH:  $600
FUEL:  $75
MEALS:  $130
OTHER:  $50
——————-
TOTAL:  $855

By my $50 standard, we needed to sell 17 covers to pay for the show.

Any wonder, then, that we sold 17?

Now, I don’t count sales by our wholesale customers, even if they are generated at the show, but one of the companies that retails our product did sell two covers to a customer. 

So we fell short of our goal, but we were still able to pay for the show with sales.

Here’s a list of the conventions we’ve attended, which includes the costs for each and the goals we set because of those costs.  You’ll see that the two conventions where we missed out goals by a wide margin were two years of the Kentucky show.  Also, the last three convention are in the future, so the expenses are only educated guesses at this point.

CONVENTION	DATE	BOOTH	HOTEL	TRAVEL	MEALS	PROMO	MISC.	TOTAL	GOAL	ACTUAL
Kentucky FDA	6/25/2008	$570	$490	$420	$240	$90	$187	$1,997	40	32
NFDA	10/12/2008	$4,800	$280	$100	$300	$100	$100	$5,680	114	153
Georgia Expo	3/1/2009	$550	$248	$110	$165	$50	$50	$1,173	23	22
Ohio FDA	5/25/2009	$650	$360	$325	$200	$50	$100	$1,685	34	46
IFDF	6/12/2009	$0	$102	$40	$65	$25	$35	$267	5	11
Kentucky FDA	6/24/2009	$570	$500	$300	$360	$50	$150	$1,930	39	15
NFDA	10/22/2009	$2,500	$550	$800	$300	$150	$600	$4,900	98	113
SCFDA	2/2/2010	$600	$0	$75	$130	$0	$50	$855	17	17
Georgia Expo	3/1/2010	$500	$250	$70	$70	$0	$60	$950	19
Ohio FDA	4/27/2010	$625	$360	$175	$125	$50	$60	$1,395	28
IFDF	6/10/2010	$300	$0	$25	$50	$0	$50	$425	9

Since our biggest non-booth expense for most of our conventions is lodging, finding a place to stay in our host cities is a nice benefit that saves serious money.

In South Carolina, I was fortunate enough to have family living in Columbia.  For the IFDF’s 2010 show, I’ll stay with my sister in Tampa.  I may be able to save money on the Ohio convention, if I can convince my good friend Albert to let me crash on his couch.

No matter how the next few conventions shake out, we expect to be able to continue getting close to our goals (or exceeding them) because of the great response we’re getting to our quilted cot covers. 

Of course, I’ll continue to closely monitor our progress and adjust accordingly.  Stay tuned!

 

Preparations Underway for South Carolina Convention

Heads up to our friends attending the South Carolina Funeral Directors Association Conference and Expo:  we’ll be there!

We’re heading North to show off our quilted cot covers to the great funeral directors in South Carolina.  I’m excited, since the organizers tell me that funeral directors from at least three other states regularly attend the show.  In fact, I’ve heard from a number of other exhibitors that South Carolina is one of the best Southern shows to attend.

Truth is, we were disappointed by last year’s Kentucky expo and did not expect to attend many other small shows.  Our NFDA presence has been such a great benefit to us that we considered sticking to larger expos and forgetting about the smaller venues.

But then we took a long hard look at our last couple of shows, including the Ohio, Georgia and Florida shows, and came to a surprising conclusion:  small shows are usually just as profitable as the big ones!

Oh, but one caveat:  only for the first two years.  After that, we have to either find a new product to push or take a year or two off.

Our Independent Funeral Directors of Florida expos were great the first two years, but the third year saw a dropoff, mostly because we’d already sold covers to every funeral director at the show.  Our pool of potential new customers shrank every time we sold to another person from the group. 

So we’re planning to roll out our dressing table skirt design at the IFDF show in June.  In fact, we’d like to show it off at the Georgia Expo in early March, but I’m giving my team time to get everything squared away without crazy pressure.

This South Carolina expo, February 2-3, is going to cost us less than $1000 to attend.  First, we’re staying with my uncle, who lives in Columbia, so no hotel room.  The rent of the booth itself is just shy of $600 and my Prius sips gas sparingly, so we should be able to make it there and back on just over two tanks of gas.  Add to the total some food and other incidentals and I’m thinking $800 or so for the entire event.

After we get back, we’ve got just a few weeks to process all the orders and head out to the Georgia Expo, which is March 1st and 2nd in Atlanta. 

Come see us at a show!  Remember, we always give a healthy discount for Expo orders.