7 November 2012 – The Good Funeral Guide

You could just get away with it

What’s bad news for undertakers is good news for the rest of us. And the good news for the rest of us is that, in the words of the Guardian,

Less of us are dying than at any time since mortality data was collected.

Good news for the rest of us, but rotten news for grammarians, whose binoculars are trained on this blog. ‘Less’ should read ‘fewer’.

Or more optimistically still:

More of us are not dying than at any time since records began.

That aside, last year’s mortality figures, now out, reveal that a mere 484,367 deaths were registered in England and Wales, 1.8% down on 2010. In a nation with an oversupply of undertakers, that spells hard times for the Dismal Trade, which is likely to experience a climbing mortality rate as the weakest go to the wall.

More to the point, it shows that a lot of people are getting clean away with it, and I hope that puts a hopeful spring in your step.

So, what are other people dying of?

Apart from the usual suspects, 5 died from falling off a cliff and no one died from rat bite. 51 men and just 1 woman died from falling off a ladder.

Get the full stats here.

And remember: it needn’t be you!

Crowdsourcing a Space-Age Distribution Strategy

Posted by Tom Walkinshaw

Ed’s note: Tom is an enterprising fellow who has a plan to launch ashes into Space – Space burial, he calls it. He needs your help and expertise to get it off the ground, which is why he crowdsourcing on the blog this morning at our invitation.

Alba Orbital are now a few steps down the start-up path. We have done a lot of research both online and out in the real world with only one more presentation to go. The journey has been exciting and rewarding (last week I had dinner with Apollo 12 Command module pilot Dick Gordon) but we have reached a crossroads. How do we distribute our service to the masses?

We want to take ashes where not many ashes have before… Space. For the record I do know it sounds crazy and people often wonder why I think it makes sense to do something so left of field. My opinion is that it is being done successfully currently in the USA, so why can’t the UK do it? It is up to people’s personal choice, but it is a choice we must all make. Cremation is now being chosen by 75% of Brits with that number on the rise year-on-year. We want to offer a solution to the Ashes Dilemma.

Things have gone well and we are in talks with a few Universities around collaborating on our first satellite. We have been supported by the Princes Trust who aim to help young people start-up in Business (I am still only 22). We have done well in a National Spin-out competition the ‘Converge Challenge’ and are the first company to incorporate ourselves.

So the challenge we now face is how do we reach our customers? How do we bring an innovative product to a traditional marketplace? We don’t have the answers. We have ideas and that is why we are putting it out to the Good Funeral Guide readership for their opinions on the matter. 420,000 people get cremated each year and none of them know we even exist.

We think a pre-planning option makes a lot sense, staggering the costs and is less of a knee jerk buying decision. For point of use do we partner with Funeral Directors? Would they take us seriously? We would love to know your thoughts. Online is a key tool for all business, but should we invest in allowing our service to be purchased on the web?

There are no dates in our diary for launching our pricing option, we want to do it right rather than do it fast. Any opinion positive/negative is always welcome. Thank you for reading.

Tom Walkinshaw
MD, Alba Orbital

Website: www.albaorbital.com Twitter: @albaorbital Email: contact@albaorbital.com