Redirecting funeral directors
There are no urns, no headstones, nor people wearing black or Victorian-era vibes at the Poppy’s store in East Sheen. It is instead a light and airy space with a warm and friendly atmosphere where the team are proud to serve good coffee.
This is the new face of funeral directing that Poppy’s Funerals, to give it its full name, has been pioneering since it was founded by Poppy Mardall in 2012 with the objective of disrupting the funeral directors category. It’s achievements to date has seen the business feature prominently in the recently-published ‘Disruptors & Innovators in Retail 2026’ report.
Subscribe to TRBDisrupting funerals sector
Funeral directing is hardly a new business but it has arguably changed very little over the years, according to Clare Montagu, CEO of Poppy’s Funerals, who says traditionally funerals were handled at home with the body looked after in the ‘parlour’ within people’s houses before being buried in the churchyard. It was very much handled in the community and the business aspect of things was in the hands of joiners because they were the people who produced the coffins.
“The evolution of the sector came as people lived longer and deaths were less frequent. Death, like healthcare, was outsourced and funerals moved away from being handled by the community. Although these new funeral businesses were local and family-owned we had by then lost the experience of death. We don’t talk about it. As we’ve got healthier we do not think about death anymore,” she says.
Montagu invited The Retail Bulletin down to East Sheen to hear about how Poppy’s is shaking things up and how the business is very much in the retail services category. It has embraced a customer-centric, multi-channel approach with personalisation at its heart, which has been lacking from the sector.
Ongoing consolidation
This impersonal aspect has possibly not been helped by the ongoing phenomenon of local independent funeral directors being taken over by three large groups – Co-op Funeralcare, Dignity Funerals and Funeral Partners – that account for around a third of the market. The remainder consists of large regional chains and a long tail of remaining independents that typically comprise one or two outlets on the high street.
Against this backdrop Montagu says people very rarely shop around for funerals and the oddly unregulated nature of the sector has likely contributed to a variety of exposés that have damaged the sector, and have encompassed very aggressive selling, bad employee practices, and poor states of back-office activities.
“The sector has grown up without a framework of laws governing it. There are moves afoot to change things,” she says, adding that new laws-aside Mardall recognised the scandals surrounding the sector and Poppy’s is the disruptor she created to “do things differently”.
Building a physical presence
The business is based in Tooting, within Lambeth Cemetery, where the mortuary is housed in the old chapel building and visiting customers experience a light-filled space that is a sufficiently welcoming environment that the business hosts regular events for the community and anyone looking to learn more about death and funerals. The East Sheen store was added only two years ago and will be joined be a second outlet later in April in Raynes Park in South West London.
“It’s important to feel part of the community. Having a store is an important part of the [funeral] sector, and it’s good for marketing as it gives us a presence. We’ve meeting rooms and people can just wander in and ask questions. We have a light and airy space compared to the Victorian aesthetic in other places,” explains Montagu.
The business also offers lots of choice and this is one of its key differentiators. Although she says many other funeral directors have followed Poppy’s the industry still very much wedded to a Gold, Silver, Bronze-type approach of options and a deal might be done with them whereby they maybe “throw in some limos”.
Pick ‘n’ mix approach
“We’re moving out of this to a pick ‘n’ mix approach. We don’t want to change what people want and give them things they don’t want. You choose whatever you want. We help people at a tough, sensitive time when they could be vulnerable. We help them find exactly what it is they want. We’ve led the way with this and now larger companies are doing more personalisation,” says Montagu.
This can be in the form of the burial, the way the service is held, the locations of the funerals, and other personal touches that can be integrated into the experience and service by the customer. Positively, she finds younger people expect more and are more open to talking about what they want for funerals. They are no doubt contributing to the increased desire for the more bespoke-type service that Poppy’s offers and have possibly been behind the rise of natural funerals and the move to wicker coffins that can involve people weaving the structure themselves ahead of the funeral.
Poppy’s certification as a B Corp has also been recognised by customers – and potential employees – as a signifier of the business’ caring attitude. “It shows we are strong on values. In reality we were doing all the things that the B Corp required anyway,” she suggests.
Despite the myriad options Montagu says the business is not aimed at the premium end of the market and seeks to “give a great service to everyone”. “We give outstanding care and service to the living and the dead,” she says, adding that often people come to Poppy’s after they have had a bad experience elsewhere.
Marketing for growth
To capture more people the business is adding more shops but this is only one strand of its strategy that encompasses a variety of marketing activity encompassing out-of-home campaigns, digital and brand advertising, and relationship marketing as well as the holding of events at the mortuary.
And there is proof that it is working. Poppy’s has enjoyed 20% growth each year over the past three years as the team has grown to 43 people under the guidance of Montagu who joined in late-2021 to head-up the organisation. The business currently handles around 500 funerals per year.
Montagu is not afraid to highlight that the business is ambitious: We’re unique in London and we have plans to do more. We’ve laid the foundations to be bigger.” But the growth will not be fuelled by external funding from third-parties because the preference is to grow sustainably. “We think that what we do matters. We’re ambitious but it will not be about moving fast and breaking things.”
