Word: loewen
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...corporate replay of INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS, Loewen seeks to create the illusion that local funeral homes are still run exactly as they always have been, by native sons and daughters with a vested interest in the community. Although Loewen boasts of its acquisitions to shareholders, it otherwise keeps its ownership quiet. Anyone who calls David Riemann today, for example, gets an operator who says, "Riemann Service," just as operators have done since 1920. Says Ray Loewen: "Our objective is to honor the name and be a champion of tradition and history...
Which wouldn't matter if not for the tendency of Loewen and SCI to raise prices after taking control. The consolidators increase revenue through a combination of price hikes and a deft reconfiguring, or "remerchandising," of casket showrooms to ensure that customers buy caskets with far better profit margins. At the same time, they cut their costs by buying caskets and other materiel de mort at volume discounts and by linking funeral homes in clusters that share hearses, embalming rooms and other services. You may deposit your late Uncle Harry in that luxurious if slightly creepy Colonial house...
None of the tactics employed by the consolidators is illegal, although Arizona, where SCI has a powerful presence, is contemplating a law that would require the companies to disclose their ownership to consumers. "I can't point to SCI and Loewen and say they're doing anything wrong," says David Walkinshaw, a third-generation funeral director who owns the Saville Funeral Home in Arlington, Massachusetts. "They're doing things the way major corporations do in every other area of our economy...
What especially galled O'Keefe about Loewen's moving into the area was that after it acquired Riemann, it promptly bought the Wright & Ferguson Funeral Home in Jackson, Mississippi, which had previously sold only O'Keefe's brand of pre-need insurance. Suddenly, however, the Riemanns began selling their own brand through the new acquisition. O'Keefe took his protest directly to Ray Loewen...
Like O'Keefe, Loewen grew up in the funeral industry. He helped transport bodies to and from his father's Manitoba funeral home. "It was," he would later testify, "a great way to grow up in a small country town." He launched the Loewen Group in 1985. Last year, just a decade later, the company had nearly $600 million in revenue, more than 90% of it from its U.S. operations...