Afterstone Founder Victoria Marsh reflects on the Cremation Society's 150th-anniversary research blog July 23rd 2026 "Funeral directors must help families move beyond the template funeral." Find the original SAIF blog here: https://saif.org.uk/blog/funeral-directors-must-help-families-move-beyond-the-template-funeral/
I should be upfront: I'm new to this profession. I haven't spent decades earning my funeral stripes, and I've no intention of telling the people who have how to do their jobs. I came into it from the other side entirely, as a customer who went looking for a way to say goodbye and couldn't find it. That's the whole reason Afterstone exists. So, when I read the Cremation Society's 150th-anniversary research, I wasn’t surprised.
Tradition is loved, and rightly so
Let me say this plainly, because it matters. Many people love the traditional funeral, and they always will. My own uncle is a perfect example. For him, the familiar church service, done with care last Friday after the committal at Weston Crematorium, was exactly what he, my aunt and the family wanted. Nothing that follows is an argument against that.
But the ground is shifting
The landscape is changing around all of us, though, quietly and faster than we realise. People’s values and attitudes are changing. Budgets are tighter. Saving behaviours are different. Belief in religion is not what it was a generation ago. The recent research holds a mirror up to it.
And here's the thing about change: in nature, evolution isn't a betrayal of what came before. It's how something survives. Adaptation isn't the opposite of tradition; it's what allows the best of it to carry on.
Why the independent matters
Which brings me to the part I feel most strongly about. I would hate to see the independent funeral director disappear. Because what a good independent funeral director offers is gold.
The knowledge of a community and an instinct for what a grieving family actually needs. Their willingness to make one more phone call and bend the day around the person rather than the schedule. That can't be mass-produced, and it can't be replaced. And once it's gone, swallowed into something larger, more corporate, and standardised, it is almost impossible to get back.
So this isn't a warning about falling behind. It's closer to a hope that those independents who do this beautifully find adaptive ways to keep doing it in a world that's changing under their feet.
Find what you're brilliant at
Now you might be wondering – who the hell is this person, and you’d be right to do so. Before starting Afterstone, I spent 30 years in the corporate world of Life Sciences and Regulated Technology, developing ideas and taking over and scaling businesses so they stand out in a sea of 'me-too's'. I'd love to put that experience to work for the profession I've joined, because an industry is always stronger together, and I recognise that whilst you may be brilliant at handling the deceased, sometimes you also need a helping hand to evolve.
Where do you begin?
Being told you need to adapt and knowing where to start are two different things. For me, I’d start with:
What’s your why? What do you stand for? And where do you want to be AND be known for in, say, 5 years’ time? (Because change doesn’t happen just overnight because you’ve written new company values, so you’ll need to plan out how you get from where you are to where you want to be and what the milestones to achieving that are.)
The independents and companies generally I most admire don't try to be everything to everyone. They know exactly what they're brilliant at, and they've become known for it. They have clear signposting. Their community knows who they are and where to find them when they need them. There's real freedom in that; you get to serve the families you're best placed to serve, and they get precisely the company they were hoping to find.
Consider your audience – what’s their demographic, and what’s their average income bracket? How do they behave – in good and bad times.
What’s important to those families? Don’t know or haven’t asked in a while? Go and talk to your target audience. Go to local events – ask questions and thank people for their input – however hard it might be to hear.
How far afield do customers who use you come from?
What’s the split between attended and non-attended cremation/burial, and where, from your experience, will the direction of travel go?
Consider yourself and your team. When work is a pleasure, life is a joy. You have to love what you do and what you sell. So unearth and embrace the amazing skills within your team.
You may own the business, but a leader is nothing without the people behind them. Play to the skills you have in-house already. And, if you realise that to evolve, you need skills that you don’t currently have, put it into the plan to acquire them. It may be lovely to hand the business down the family, but in today’s world, you need the person with the right skills at the helm. That person may be an employee vs. your son or daughter.
Be realistic. Trying to push high-end memorials in an area with tightening budgets is not a path for success. Equally, don’t offer skills, like personalisation, if none of your team is creative and would rather have their teeth pulled out than learn a further piece of software.
As a consumer, when I lost my father, these are some of the easily identifiable labels I’d have wanted to see to make my selection when searching for a funeral director in his local area.
- Premium farewell. Traditional OR modern, done impeccably, over and above customer service coupled with event management across service and wake – akin to a wedding organiser.
- Affordable traditional and classic – quality farewell – attended services, service arrangement and recommendations/introductions for wake locations.
- Affordable and modern – focus on modern goodbyes – other locations to crematorium/church for locations.
- Burial specialist
- Unattended goodbye – maybe offer in-house ways people can say goodbye to their loved one in a chapel or dedicated room and then help them with their farewell wishes. Focus on making ash scattering the event, whether at home, outside or in a venue that meant something to them. Focus on the celebration of their lives.
- Budget-conscious but beautiful — Become an expert at delivering thoughtful, memorable goodbyes that are affordable. Sell direct cremation and funeral kits so families can build their event themselves. Sell consulting time and provide families with details to make it special.
- Green inside and out. For families where this really matters. Sustainable from coffin to keepsake, for families who want to tread lightly.
- Faith and religion. Real fluency in the traditions that matter most to your community.
- Alternative and out-there — the big band, the football ground, the aerial ash firework display, the send-off no one forgets.
A quiet word on transparency
There's one more thing families increasingly value, and it's honesty about who they're dealing with. A previous local independent and a familiar family name now operating inside a larger group's guidelines, policies and directions are not quite the same thing, and customers rather want to know which is which. Upfront, not hidden and only raised if asked.
If you're truly independent and truly free to say yes, that's worth being clear about. It may be one of the most valuable things you have. Display your SAIF badge with pride both at your location and on your website. And to SAIF – nudge the SAIF website IT team to deliver ‘follow backlinks’ to your members and associate members! Backlinks provide clear direction to search engines about your E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness).
What "I don't want a fuss" really means
It's worth pausing on that phrase we all hear so often — "I don't want a fuss." As a customer, I don't think it usually means what we assume. It's rarely indifference. More often it's money: the fear of debt, the guilt of leaving loved ones out of pocket. It's the worry that no one will feel able to stand up and speak. It's the quiet dread that a modest service might look cheap — and the sense that if it can't be done well, perhaps it's better not done at all.
But here is what I hold on to. Every life is important. As a society, we've come a long way — from unmarked, unnamed graves to an age where each life was marked and remembered. And we now risk drifting into a new era where cremated lives slip away unnoticed and unrecorded, invisible to the generations who follow.
However small, however long — every life deserves an acknowledgement that it was lived.
That's what drew me into this from the outside. And it's why I hope those who understand it instinctively don't just weather the changes ahead but lead them.
