If You Build it, Cremation Families will Come

by Andrew Clark

At Woodridge Memorial Park & Funeral Home inLexington, South Carolina, thoughtful design, expanded options at multiple price points and teamwork have come together to make Pine Haven Cremation Estates a model for future cemetery development. Since the dedicated cremation garden opened in 2019, overall sales at the cemetery have increased nearly 350%. But that’s only the beginning of the story.

 Our Foundation Partners Group national cemetery team recently did an analysis of aggregate sales data for the three years before the launch of Pine Haven Cremation Estates and three years after. The results area stounding. In addition to the overall jump in sales, unit sales were up 78%and the average revenue per unit increased by 152%. Revenue per cremation call increased 313%. These results far outpaced our cremation call volume, which was up just 9% over the period we studied.

 So, what’s the secret sauce? I recently spoke to our resident Funeral Home Manager David Hardee, a licensed funeral director, and FamilyService Advisor Gregg Pinner, both long-time residents of theLexington/Columbia area.

 “Sitting on 40 developed acres, with additional room to grow, Woodridge Memorial Park is not a large cemetery,” said David. “It’s a small, well-kept cemetery with large trees, abundant azaleas and a lake that blends harmoniously into the surrounding landscape. Residents on this side of Columbia are relatively traditional in their thinking and they like the boutique nature of our facilities. “

Foundation Partners Group took over Woodridge MemorialPark as part of its acquisition of Thompson Funeral Homes in 2011. At the time, neither Woodridge, nor any other cemetery in the area, had a dedicated area for cremation families. The choices were limited to in-ground entombment or placement in a columbarium incorporated into the on-site chapel mausoleum.

 While cremation rates traditionally have been lower in South Carolina and throughout the South compared to the rest of the nation, cremation is on the rise in the area.  Foundation Partners is committed to serving cremation families; so, when inventory began to run low at Woodridge MemorialPark, our team began to design a dedicated space for cremated remains. Ultimately, the project also included a significant expansion to the park’s chapel mausoleum as well.

 Location, location, location

“Our cremation garden is placed in the best possible location in terms of visibility and traffic,” David said. “It could have been tucked into a distant corner of cemetery, but our design team wisely placed it in an open area to one side of our mausoleum and directly in front of our funeral home entrance. It’s a cemetery within a cemetery, and one of the first things visiting families see when they visit our park.” Gregg added, “We have the technology to do funeral arrangements remotely, but families in this area usually like to come to see us in person. It really helps to have our funeral home, chapel mausoleum and cremation garden within eyeshot of each other. Once we explain the wide variety of cremation memorialization options available in Pine Haven Estates, and they see its simplicity and beauty, many traditional families see cremation in a whole new light.”

 Options and Price Points

When Pine Haven Cremation Estates opened in 2019, Woodridge Memorial and its sister cemetery Green lawn Memorial Park were the only cemeteries in the Greater Columbia region with areas intentionally designed for cremation families. “Pine Haven was the first of its kind in the area and offers cremation families a wide variety of options and price points, ranging from a one-person pedestal with a single core post that requires no urn or cylinder to dedicated family cremation estates,” David said. Gregg said the ability to personalize memorials has driven a great deal of interest in Pine Haven. “Area residents are big college football fans and the rivalry between the South Carolina Gamecocks and theClemson Tigers is fierce. We offer cremation pedestals that are hand carved with these team logos and it has helped us create quite a buzz. We offer a variety of other customized carvings and toppers, including those designed for fishermen and the deeply religious,” he said.

 Spreading the word

The unique nature of Pine Haven’s memorialization options, along with the fact that it was a first for the area, contributed to our very successful grand opening, which included a ribbon cutting with city dignitaries and the Chamber of Commerce. We also leveraged our Facebook page and invested heavily in local advertising. Our deep roots in the community also helped us gain traction for the new addition. “Pine Haven Cremation Estates draws families from our threeThompson Funeral Homes, the South Carolina Cremation Society as well as from unaffiliated funeral homes throughout the Columbia-Lexington area,” Gregg said. “By offering unique options, we’ve been able to pique the interest of families who may not have necessarily thought about cremation and educate them to the value of permanent memorialization.”

 Teamwork Makes the Dream Work

David, Gregg and the entire Thompson Funeral Homes team have done a tremendous job serving the needs of cremation families in their area. It’s worth noting that they achieved the 350% increase in sales without bringing in more salespeople or by virtue of an extraordinary increase in calls. More over, the size and makeup of their team did not change over the period we analyzed. Their success can be attributed to hard work put in by a good team that supported each other and their community, creative and appealing landscape design, and a mix of options and price points that satisfies every family’s needs.

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Andrew Clark is Chief Customer Officer for Foundation Partners Group where he leads all field operations, operational strategy, sales and customer experience activities across the company’s more than 230 locations. He is a Licensed Funeral Director and Embalmer and Vice Chairman of the Florida Board of Funeral, Cemetery and Consumer Services. Prior to joining Foundation Partners, he was director of operations for Hiers-Baxley Funeral Services in Ocala, Florida. Andrew can be reached at Andrew.clark@foundationpartners.com.