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 from accountants to data processors, who are kept constantly busy servicing, at vast savings, the needs of a half dozen or more 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. In markets like Houston, where SCI with its 20 funeral and cemetery businesses has a predominant position (75 percent of the market), its prices—according to a recent survey—average 60 percent higher than those of independents in the area; in Washington D.C., 40 percent higher. Prices of Loewen Group mortuaries tend to parallel those of SCI.

Although the consolidators own only about 10 percent of the nation’s funeral homes, these tend to be prime properties in key markets and account for 20 percent of the country’s funerals. The funeral customer is totally unaware of the strategy of clustering because of the immensely successful SCI policy of anonymity. In general, the plan is to acquire Johnson’s Chapel of Eternal Rest and keep not only the name but also Johnson himself, now installed as salaried manager, thus ensuring continuity of recognition and goodwill. When the occasion arises, you think of dear old Mr. J., honest old chap that your family had dealt with over the years, and so you go to Johnson’s, where Mr. J. greets you and leads you through the casket-selection room and signs you up for the funeral. Little do you know that the Dear Departed has been whisked off for embalming elsewhere, to reappear looking twenty years younger, nicely made up, and elegantly dressed in Johnson’s “slumber room,” where friends and family may gather to say their last farewells. Nor do you know that Johnson’s Chapel is now a highly predatory outfit where nothing’s the same—particularly the prices.

As a customer following Mr. Johnson into the casket-selection room, you may think you are being shown some randomly placed caskets, with nary a clue to the strategy carefully plotted by SCI, Johnson’s employers, as he leads you through your paces. An SCI directive to its Australian employees reads like a TV miniseries script, complete with stage directions:

There follows a glowing description of the Hanover, which is priced at $2,995. Doe or counterpart then tells the family:

The casket prices quoted for Australia may be increased by a factor of three or more for their U.S. equivalent. Note, too, the use of the word “coffin,” a definite no-no in the lexicon of the American funeral trade. But Down Under, the word “casket” may mean—as elsewhere in the English speaking world except for the United States—an ornate box for jewels and other valuables. Australians are just now being indoctrinated by SCI into its undertaker-bestowed meaning of burial receptacles.

SCI has improved upon the somewhat primitive list of okay words (see chapter 5) in its recent manual for the use of its cemetery salespeople (emphasis as in the original text):

The gravedigger has a problem. He may not fill the grave with Dirt, he must fill it with Earth. His task will be preceded not by a Funeral, but by a Memorial Service. The decedent was not Sick, he was Ill. And he didn’t Die, he Passed On. His remains were not Embalmed, they were Prepared. There were no Mourners present for the Service, only Relatives and Friends.

Mortuaries acquired by the Loewen Group have their own method of boosting casket prices, known in-house as “Third Unit Target Merchandising.” It capitalizes on the propensity of the muddled survivors to avoid the cheapest caskets and choose the next one up in price. This means chucking a newly acquired mortuary’s usual lowest-priced offerings and replacing them with more expensive substitutes, so that when the customer picks that third-unit target he ends up choosing a casket that yields a much sweeter profit. A similar practice is in general use among consolidators; who refer to it simply as “remerchandising.”

The buccaneering tactics introduced by the consolidators have paid off in enviable profit margins. The Loewen Group in a recent filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) reported a stunning gross profit margin of 41 percent from its funeral operations. SCI’s profit margin for funerals for the same period was a still robust 25.3 percent.

According to a survey by the nonprofit Memorial Society of North Texas, mortuaries owned by SCI, Loewen, and Stewart Enterprises, the three largest consolidators, were consistently more expensive than the independents in the area. A Loewen-owned mortuary in Amarillo, Texas, charged a “basic services fee” (the nondeclinable fee allowed by the FTC) of $1,638. The other three Amarillo funeral homes in the survey charged an average of $863.