My business idea, your thoughts?

BusterJohnny

Just wanted to know what people thought of my business idea, and whether it would be viable. It is basically a grave maintainance company offering monthly, six monthly or yearly maintainance of a persons grave. Which would include general maintainance, weeding, pruning of shrubs, power washing, and planting of new shrubs and plants if desired. I was also thinking of offering once off revamps of graves ie. putting down new chippings, bark mulch and plants maybe, repairs to headstones and graves.
As well as offering flower arrangements with personal notes from the client on set days in the month ect. I am qualified bricklayer and spent 10 years in construction and landscaping and I know I could do it, just wondering if it is worth doing? Can I make a business out of it? There are a few businesses offering this service in the Dublin area, but the city I live in (munster area) has little or no one offering a dedicated full time service like this. I was thinking it would be benefical to those overseas and want their loved one's graves seen after. Any thoughts or ideas are very welcome, thanks, John

BostonB

I don't know if theres money in it. But I can certainly see where people would use it. As you say people who are not in the country. Or people simply unable to do it themselves. Its much like Garden maintenance.

Peterdalkey

I live in South Dublin and I see the Grave Angels website is dead. Those guys did great marketing and promotion some years ago. I fear for the business model if they have not made it work.
I suspect it might be a great add on to the more general landscape/garden service business, sold to existing customers.

My own mum passed in the last week and the old family grave in Deans Grange certainly needs work. I fear both graves and Hell are both paved with good intentions, especially after a recent loss.

Cheers

Peter

dh0661

Hi John - there is a guy who does this in Killarney. I'll try to get his phone # and pass it on to you ASAP.

highlandseoghan

I think the business idea is very good and if you can offer it at a good price you could do well. If you could get permission off a graveyard to let you sell flowers at the entrance I feel this would start getting cash in and would let visitors to the grave get to know you a build trust with you.

If there was a way for you to contact family that had people burried in the local cemetary and offer this service it would save you a fortune on advertising. The idea is great and once you can get your business into the people who have loved ones in the grave your onto a winner but the hard part will be getting your business known and this I feel will be the make or break of this business.

Would the local graveyards let you put an advertisment up onto the railings at the entrance to let everyone know about your service.

smcgiff

Great idea - marketing of it needs to be done sensitively of course - getting in with funeral directors may be an idea. Good luck with this.

Admor Tony

John,

The need may exist but at least one key challenge will be to find out who your actual clients might be and then to get details of your service to them. The people who may need to use your service will not be at the cemetery very often.

You could consider linking up with undertakers and offer the service at the time when the family will be at the grave and try to capture their e-mail addresses so you can follow up later.

TsuDhoNimh

highlandseoghan wrote: »

If there was a way for you to contact family that had people burried in the local cemetary and offer this service it would save you a fortune on advertising.

Do take care with this.

If you made direct contact with me as a result of or based on a family member being in a graveyard you served, I'd hit the roof. Regardless of how good the service is/was and how much I might have been interested in it, if the contact was made in that manner it would grate on every nerve and completely put me off the business. (Even more so with the idea of trying to collect my mail addy at graveside, that I'd consider completely crossing the line.)

You can still target it very accurately using the likes of funeral homes/directors, death notices in papers, sponsoring of local radio announcements and the likes, but as smcgiff said it needs to be in a very sensitive manner.

Admor Tony

TsuDhoNimh wrote: »

(Even more so with the idea of trying to collect my mail addy at graveside, that I'd consider completely crossing the line.)

I did not mean to suggest collecting e-mail addresses at the graveside. I meant they could be collected via the undertakers during the period they provide the service and of course in an entirely sensitive way.

The Apprentice

I would just target the Local Obituaries section in the Paper, you may get a discount for a decent spot for the next year paid monthly ??

In the big picture wouldn't it be great to get that service incorporated as part of a life insurance policy?

tricky D

Admor Tony wrote: »

I did not mean to suggest collecting e-mail addresses at the graveside. I meant they could be collected via the undertakers during the period they provide the service and of course in an entirely sensitive way.

Bereavement can be often a long drawn out process and any activity during some of the stages can easily lead to a hostile reaction, especially at the anger stage and even later your activity could re-trigger anger. The period of dealing with the undertaker will usually have finished long before bereavement is 'over'. So you have to figure out when and how is the best time and method to make your move. A talk to some undertakers or the Bereavement Counselling Service might help you in that regard.

From my own recent experience, if you had approached me in certain period after my dad's passing, well after the undertaking had been done, you would have gotten a bad reaction and the word would have somewhat spread about the 'nerve of this crowd', no matter how sensitive and professional your approach.

Secondly, there might be issues with local authority graveyards permitting 3rd parties working in the graveyard, public liability at the minimum, also limitations on decoration and also impinging on existing graveyard services.

Lastly, another problem is the dwindling market with fewer available graves and the rise in cremation.

YellowSheep

All you need is monitoring www.rip.ie on daily basis for new clients.

PCPhoto

Admor Tony wrote: »

I did not mean to suggest collecting e-mail addresses at the graveside. I meant they could be collected via the undertakers during the period they provide the service and of course in an entirely sensitive way.

opening up a possible action for breach of data protection if the undertaker passes on the information.

BusterJohnny

Thanks for all the messages guys. Can I just ask if anyone of the boards.ie community would use a service like this if it existed to see after a loved one's grave for maybe a year,ie cleaning, powerwashing, repairs if necessary, new ornaments ect. How much would you pay for such a service.?? Still can't decide in my head if its worth doing or not. i know you would have to get public liability insurance, plus as I am would have to spend 1000 plus to get going on tools. I am lucky enough in one way as I have a few tools already from my building days. Maybe one man on his own could make a living at it. Anyway thanks for the comments, and keep the advice coming, I need it! John

arbitrage

The best time to advertise this would possibly be a year after the passing when the headstone is being purchased so you may get a fair bit of business through the gravestone manufacturer if the family have moved away from the area.

Besides that an ad in the local weekly paper would be the way to go but for most people they like to tend to the grave themselves in the few years after passing.

How you broach the idea is crucial. I know of two lads who separately got a hold of commercial power washers and stuck a few ads in the paper for headstone cleaning and waited for the calls that never came.

Overthrow

I would have thought the graveyard operators would run this kind of service themselves?

capefear

Hi

I think like others, its a good idea but like the last poster I taught the that type of work would be done by the graveyard operators.

Another thing to keep in mind, graveyards seem to be changing due to lack of space. I was at a funeral not so long ago in swords and went to a graveyard after wards and the front of the graveyard (the older part) was the same as you would expect a graveyard to be headstones with marked out plots etc but when we got to the plots of the newer graves there was just a line of headstones with a bit of space between them and none of the usual layouts of plots or stones. The way they were laid out a rideon is all that was need to just cut the grass. We were told afterwards it was because they were running out of land .

An area I always taught who would be a need a good overall handy man would be apartment management companys. The newer Management Companies are always looking to reduce their service fees and having worked in the area awhile back the one side of the business we always had trouble with was finding a reliable handyman who would come in and make sure the common areas were well maintained and any other issues were dealt with.

Best of luck if you decide to go ahead with the business.