It is sad to admit it, but all people are mortal. We are born, we live the time allotted to us, and then we die. While modern science is not able to stop this process. A healthy lifestyle and huge financial investments in your health are not able to make a person immortal. But everyone treats death differently. For some, this is a great grief, but for others, inevitability. In addition, for some people, the ritual part of the event is the opportunity to earn money. Of course, the ritual business is quite specific and is not suitable for everyone. But if you are ready for such work, then you may well become the owner of a profitable business.
Advantages and disadvantages
Before you begin to consider the business plan of the ritual business, you need to talk about the main pros and cons of such work. Only in this way will you be able to make an informed decision about opening your own funeral services bureau.
Here are the main advantages:
- Demand: this is especially true for large cities. Firstly, residents there earn more and more easily part with the required amount. Many simply do not know what to do with the deceased, and are ready to give any money for help in this matter.
- Plenty of room for activity: you can deal not only with the solution of all problems associated with funeral arrangements, they also recommend that you run a business along the way to sell funeral goods.
- Relatively small start-up capital.
- The ability to independently create their own competitive advantages that will distinguish you from other funeral agencies.
- High profitability: according to experts, it can reach up to 22%.
However, the ritual business has its drawbacks. The most significant of these is the high level of competition. Since 2004, this type of activity is not subject to mandatory licensing. Therefore, in modern settlements, many ritual bureaus appeared.
Features
Let's dwell on them in more detail. Before you study the business plan of the ritual business, be sure to familiarize yourself with the main features of this business.
Here is some of them:
- You will have to deal not so much with the dead as with their friends and relatives. As a rule, these people are heartbroken, and you need to communicate with them extremely delicately. Not everyone is capable of it.
- To get a good income from the ritual business, you need to maximize the list of services offered. This may be the manufacture of related products (coffins, urns, monuments, wreaths, clothes and shoes for burial), the organization of a funeral, musical accompaniment, work with documents and so on. In other words, the client can simply contact you, pay the agreed amount and not worry about anything else.
- In addition to traditional services for middle-income people, you can also include original expensive offers, such as making textile products from ashes or vinyl records from ashes. Many today are willing to pay for the ritual burial of pets.
- At the first stages of starting a business, you can save significantly. For example, a business plan for a funeral services bureau may include a funeral carriage or a contract with a driver with your car. Earnings are also advised on the percentage paid by the owners of the restaurants chosen for holding memorial dinners.
- The profitability of the ritual bureau largely depends on the established reputation. An honest and respectable organization may well set higher prices than competitors.
How to look for a clientele?
Suppose you decide to take up a funeral business and have already drawn up a rough business plan. Funeral services are a rather specific kind of activity, and the first thing to think about is finding clients. The competition here is pretty high. Moreover, not everyone is ready to pay a significant amount for organizing the funeral of relatives and friends. Therefore, novice businessmen in this area will have to work hard to find customers. And they can help in this difficult matter:
- Quality marketing. A ready business plan for funeral services must necessarily include the costs of an advertising campaign. Here you can use any tools: the Internet, banners, announcements, etc. If you seriously decide to engage in a ritual business, you can even make your own website on which a full list of services with prices will be published.
- Word of mouth. If the clients were satisfied with the quality of the services rendered to them, as well as with the prices offered by your company, they can recommend your funeral agency to their friends and acquaintances when they need help in such a delicate matter.
- Establishing partnerships with those who can directly help you with finding clients: ambulance doctors, district doctors, morgue employees, and government officials. Many refuse to follow this path, because it is fraught with many difficulties: you will have to visit relatives who have just lost a loved one and offer them their services.
Calendar plan
How to open a funeral agency? A business plan must necessarily include a work schedule and a financial component. Before you calculate how much time and money you need to start your own business, you can’t start an activity.
Be sure to describe the main stages of the implementation of the ritual agency, as well as an approximate list of actions required for each stage. So you will understand how much time you need. The preparatory period may stretch for six months. You can reduce this period by contacting professional lawyers to complete registration actions. You yourself can spend time looking for a suitable room, purchasing equipment, and finding personnel. In this case, it is quite realistic to open a funeral agency in just three months.
Main stages
What should a funeral services business plan look like? An example describing the main steps is given below:
- business registration;
- search and preparation of premises;
- purchase of furniture, office equipment and other equipment;
- state formation;
- conducting an advertising campaign;
- opening of a funeral services agency.
registration
So what do you need to know about this? When registering a funeral business, you should choose an LLC form. It is more difficult to register it than an individual entrepreneur; therefore, it is better to hire a qualified lawyer for this procedure. As for the tax system, there are several options. You can pay tax according to a simplified scheme - 6% of income. They also recommend choosing UTII, but not in all regions taxes from the ritual business are paid according to this scheme.
Before starting your own business, you will also need to obtain permission from the fire department and SES. If you plan to formalize your employees, you will have to deal with an employment center.
Geolocation
One of the most difficult moments when opening a funeral home is the choice of location. If you are going to create a hall for parting with the dead and your own mini-morgue, then the requirements for choosing a room will be more stringent: it should not be in a residential building, be 50 meters away from private houses, children's, educational, health and cultural institutions. However, if you open a bureau somewhere outside the city, it will not start to bring you the desired profit. Ideally choose a place in a densely populated sleeping area. Here it is quite possible to find a room that complies with all legal standards. When opening a ritual agency in the courtyards, be sure to take care of the signs so that customers can easily find you.
Expenses
What does a sample business plan of funeral services with calculations look like? To enter this niche, it is not necessary to have a large starting capital. If you intend to provide all possible services, open your own production of coffins, monuments, wreaths, equip a farewell hall on the basis of your own bureau, then you will need at least 2-3 million rubles of investments. If you only plan to provide funeral services and sell finished goods, you will need a lot less money.
Here are the approximate costs required to open a funeral services bureau in a small city with a population of 200-300 thousand people. To place shops and offices, you will need to find a room of approximately 50 m2. If you are not going to equip a farewell hall and a mini-morgue, there are no special requirements for the location of the office. A small private house with a personal plot is best suited. A lot of money is not worth investing in repairs. Make everything simple and tasteful: light ceilings and walls, dark floors.
For work, you will need to purchase equipment and furniture: tables, chairs, computers, a multifunction printing device, a telephone, a cabinet for storing documents and personal belongings of staff, equipment for the bathroom. These purchases will require approximately 120 thousand rubles.
For work, you will also need to purchase counters, glass display cases, open racks and shelves for goods. For the placement of monuments and coffins, special stands will be required. Another cash register and furniture for visitors. About 150 thousand rubles are allocated for all these expenses.
Staff
The business plan of the ritual business must necessarily include such an important stage as the selection of employees. Work in this area is not very simple. You need to find people with a stable psyche. They should not be afraid of everything that is connected with the dead and death, but at the same time they must be sympathetic to the grief of others.
To open a small office you will need 6 employees: a salesperson, manager-secretary and cleaning lady (3 employees per shift). Administrative and accounting services are available. On average, about 80 thousand rubles will have to be spent on staff salaries per month.
Thus, approximately 800 thousand rubles will be spent to open your own funeral services bureau. It is worth considering that the larger your business, the greater the costs.
Profitability
What is the profitability of a funeral home? You can calculate it using the standard business plan of funeral services. An example with calculations is given below:
- organization of a single funeral - 30-35 thousand rubles;
- if you have 10 orders a month, your earnings will be 300-350 thousand rubles;
- your profit from this amount will be approximately 100 thousand rubles, the rest of the money will go to service the funeral business.