Circle: A Modern Funeral Home
Modernizing one of life’s most profound experiences through a transparent, sustainable and uplifting approach to death care.
Completed At
CCA DMBA: Venture Studio
Team
Eryn Bathke
Danielle Brown
Christopher Chen
Jeff Squires
My Role
Brand + Visual Design
Financial Modeling
Go-To-Market Strategy
Insights + Synthesis
Market + Trend Research
Value Proposition Development
What if funeral homes offered a more transparent, sustainable, and modern approach to death care?
The Challenge
Funeral homes are ripe for disruption, and there are countless reports about how broken and exploitative the industry has become. They started coming under fire for their emotional manipulation and lack of transparency, and more recently their environmental impact is being questioned. Moreover, consumers rarely shop around allowing the industry to grow stagnant. This lack of innovation is compounded by the fact that death is still a taboo topic in America.
Market Research
A Stagnant Industry
As it turns out, the funeral home industry hasn’t really changed in the last hundred years – 89% of funeral homes are family businesses; they are small and slow to evolve. They also enjoy limited competition, with 74% of customers considering only one funeral home when making arrangements. This lack of comparison shopping has created an ‘oligopoly’ in the industry – meaning there is no strong incentive to innovate. This further enables funeral homes to charge customers more and more, with costs rising at 2x the rate of inflation.
Changing Culture
And while the industry remains idle, our culture is becoming more and more progressive. Americans are becoming less religious, which is leading to fewer traditional burials and a growing cremation rate. Startups are also working towards innovating the funeral industry through technology and design. Just last year, over 26 “deathtech” companies were funded by VCs. And lastly, as we all know, consumers are becoming more and more eco-conscious and are beginning to consider sustainability across all aspects of their life – and death.
Qualitative Research
Somber
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Dated
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Expensive
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Sad
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Quiet
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Fuddy Duddy
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Depressing
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Static
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Boring
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Formal
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Oily Platitudes
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Gloomy
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Solicitous
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Cramped
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Dark
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Empty
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Morose
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Drab
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Somber • Dated • Expensive • Sad • Quiet • Fuddy Duddy • Depressing • Static • Boring • Formal • Oily Platitudes • Gloomy • Solicitous • Cramped • Dark • Empty • Morose • Drab •
Sustainability
This is how the people we talked to described their own funeral home experiences… dark… drab… depressing… outdated… Clearly the current offerings leave a lot to be desired.
“I have environmental concerns when it comes to [traditional] burial practices.”
Support
“I want an advocate who can provide emotional support and handle everything for me.”
Space
“The space itself informs how you should feel. I don’t want to feel like I have to be sad.”
Shifting The Paradigm
In recent years, a number of other industries have undergone dramatic shifts – think about how much has changed with sex, cannabis, and mental health. A lot of which was made possible by cultural reframes and adjusting how we talk about these matters. Fortunately, the death positivity movement is already starting to push society to accept death as a normal part of life.
All of this tells us that there is desirability for a better experience and that this is clearly an unmet need. Most importantly, we want to break taboos and help normalize the experience of death.
We are circle
A modern funeral home in Berkeley, CA specializing
in simple, sustainable end-of-life celebrations.
Brand Identity
Our brand sets us apart from traditional funeral homes. We ditched the doves and overdone bouquets for a clean and simple vibe complemented by a natural color palette.
Different by Design
We don’t do business like other funeral homes. We don’t look, act, or feel like other funeral homes. We also don’t follow traditions, hurt the earth, or creep you out like other funeral homes.
A New Approach to the Modern Funeral Home:
The Jewel Box
Beyond a beautiful memorial space, we envision the Jewel Box becoming a community hub. In the past, traditional religious institutions took care of major life events. With a rise in secularism, we need new places for gathering. We want to be that place, and plan to host everything from live storytelling events to grief counseling. Ultimately, these initiatives are about changing the culture and language around death.
Images courtesy of Recompose, Exit Here, HofmanDujardin
Business Model
Horizontal Integration
Historically, the funeral home industry has been vertically integrated, meaning the home owns all the elements of the experience. But the old ways of doing business are coming to an end, and there is an opportunity for a Horizontal model. A variety of new startups now streamline body disposal or offer interesting ways to commemorate someone's ashes. These new services are often cheaper and better than traditional funeral homes. This is not an easy place to compete.
We see the real potential in events… something Silicon Valley will have a much harder time disrupting. We plan to partner with these new services and focus on elevating the memorial experience. We also know that this is where funeral homes already make their money.
Preferred Partners
We view deathcare startups as potential partners – not the competition. We plan to work with Tulip, a direct-to-consumer cremation service, and Doola which provides aquamation – a process that uses water instead of fire to reduce energy and emissions. We also have relationships with several cemeteries that offer natural burial – where bodies are prepared and buried without toxic chemicals to decompose naturally.
Revenue Streams
Our primary revenue stream will be our memorial packages. Clients can choose from 3 tiers – Good, Better, or Best – varying in the quality of food, drinks, and flowers to best fit their needs and budget. Other revenue streams include mark-up fees for our body disposal partner services (cremation, aquamation, or natural burial) and retail sales (urns, bio-caskets, and shrouds).
Customer Acquisition
Target Segments
We target two customer segments – both of which share our values and appreciate curated offerings:
Progressive adults who are starting to make arrangements – we know this starts around age 50+, and is often triggered by the death of a loved one.
As well as their adult children, who are often responsible for making decisions on behalf of their deceased parents, whether they have a plan in place or not.
The Challenge
When someone dies people go into autopilot mode. They tend to go to the closest, easiest, most familiar place. We need to break that habit.
In the months or years before someone dies, we’ll target our customers through brand awareness. Pre-planning arrangements is becoming more popular as the death positivity movement grows. Furthermore, funeral homes only have so much capacity and families are only willing to drive so far for services. For that reason, most of our marketing will be hyper-local.
While marketing is helpful, it probably won't be top of mind in the moments following a death... this is a time where we must capture customers' attention through SEO + CRM tactics.
Operations
Key People
The Experience Director and Experience Associate will be responsible for all customer-facing interactions, including family consultations, event planning, and run-of-show. The other half of our organization will be devoted to backend operations. Our Operations Director and Operations Associate will manage partnerships and logistics including vendor coordination, inventory management, orders and payments.
We’ve also identified prospective thought leaders and industry professionals that we want in our inner circle to help guide our decisions, along with landscape designers, architects, business designers, and funeral home directors in our immediate networks.
Operational Phases
Our operations and logistics start at the time of a death. This first phase includes essential services for disposing of the body, obtaining required certificates and permits, and consulting with our Experience Director about next steps.
If the family chooses to hold a memorial service, a second consultation is scheduled. During this meeting, the family tours the venue, selects packages and products, and schedules the memorial.
Memorials are planned to accommodate the availability of the family. We typically schedule at least one week out from a death, allowing us time to coordinate with our vendors and for guests to make arrangements. On the day of the event, our full team works to prepare the venue, greet families and guests, and manage the run-of-show.
Financials
By The Numbers
Given our upfront costs and our need for funding, we actually start our business at a loss. But with our unique value proposition, strategic mix of customer acquisition tactics, and a low-overhead business model we’re confident in the viability of the Circle concept.
If things are going as forecasted, we’ll be profitable in year one, growing in year two, and successful by year three. After we break-even, we’ll be able to address inefficiencies across marketing, employee productivity, and operations. As we continue to grow, we’ll begin investing our profits towards expanding our portfolio of services and our reach. We're starting in Berkeley and believe there's a desire for our offering in other progressive and sustainably minded communities.
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Upfront Costs
Our space build out will be a key differentiator, and comprise 70% of our total upfront costs. We plan for a 3000 sq. ft. renovation at $150/sq.ft. plus ~$100k in working capital to fund Year 1 operations.
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Service Economics
In total, the average price of our service will be $11,475, just under the California state average ($11,777). Our COGS are just under half that, which gives us a gross profit margin of 57%.
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Marketing + Advertising
The USSBA recommends spending 7-8% of gross revenue on marketing – we plan to double that spend Year 1 at 15%, and throttle down to 10% by Year 3 as we optimize our strategy + channels.
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Sales Forecast
We’re forecasting our sales against the regional average of 312 services/home across Alameda, San Francisco, and Marin counties. We aim to hit 75% of this capacity by EOY3 with 1.15% market share.
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Break Even
We planned the space build out during summer when death rates are lowest and open for business in August. We become cash-flow positive by Month 3 and re-pay our upfront costs by Month 22.
