The funeral industry is currently facing severe challenges due to recent bouts of inflation, an industry official has said.
Speaking to The Irish Catholic, CEO of Fanagan’s funeral directors, Bryan Murphy said that recent increases in input costs have negatively impacted the industry’s profit margins.
“Obviously we’ve gone through a very high inflationary period and currently are in it. We took on an awful lot of very high input costs, whether that be timber, fuel, all the shipping stuff we put in coffins and stuff like that in”, Mr Murphy said.
“But we don’t pass that on. I mean, we will try and do that over time, but we can’t put 20% on our prices.”
Mr Murphy said that inflation was particularly difficult to deal with due to the business model of the industry.
“It’s a strange industry because we have a market which is fixed. You can’t grow the market; you don’t create demand. The demand is there. It’s very fixed, very stable.”
The CEO also noted that it was difficult to pass on increased prices to clients due to the sensitive nature of the service offered and a commitment from funeral directors to follow a value-led approach to business.
“It’s a difficult business to run when you’re dealing with values that everybody truly believes in and tries to practice, yet you’re in a commercial environment and it sometimes demands that you do things,” Mr Murphy said.
“You have to make a profit out of business, but our profit margins are not what people tend to think. Once you scale, it’s very difficult, especially if you’ve built your reputation on quality.”
