I met Nathan and Traci, owners of Til We Meet Again, in March of 2010. We have had a great friendship since which has allowed me to get inside access to what their growth plans were.
They have had a continual fight with funeral professionals, who view them as a threat, and shopping mall property owners who are making it difficult for TWMA franchises to open.
It is baffling to me why funeral professionals are viewing TWMA as a threat. Funeral service should be embracing what TWMA is doing. Funeral homes should be partnering with TWMA to provide their client families with a completely custom experience, heck if I had a funeral home I would be buying a TWMA franchise (there are a ton of possibilities here for the funeral home, but thats another conversation).
Moving on, Til We Meet Again, because of the personality dynamic between Traci and Nathan as well as the amazing custom caskets they are creating, have been contacted by a number of production companies who want to create a reality show about the store. TWMA has been pretty tight lipped about this possibility until Thursday.
Late Thursday afternoon they posted the following to their Facebook Timeline:
As some of you know we have received a lot of interest from the world of reality television. We have had a few different production companies come out to film us and now we are able to put one of the ‘sizzle’ reels on here to share with all of you (feel free to send it on to others!)
Let us know what you think…..are we made for TV or what?!
Here is the “sizzle” reel:
The world only needs a handful of shops like this Ryan. Though I certainly wish them well. They seem to be doing some interesting things.
I will say I have a hard time understanding how a custom shop like this can put together a franchise system. Franchises (think DunkinDonuts) work because they train people to run a very standardized/routinized system over and over and over again.
There’s nothing routine about the caskets they sell. Everything is a one-off and that’s more or less the opposite of franchising.
This probably means there’s room for others with similar skill sets to set up shops in other major metro areas and bring their own personalities to the mix.
If it were me though, I would get out of the mall setting. People making these kinds of decisions will tend to want more privacy.
BT, not everything we do is custom. We have licensed products as well, many of which you will only be able to buy through a ‘Til We Meet Again store. We also have private label products that are also exclusive to us. Our franchise system, much like our store is not like anything else out there.
As for the mall setting, we wondered about that ourselves. Our first store was selected primarily due to it’s location within the mall itself. It is the first store inside the main mall entrance. We had two rooms set aside and designed as family rooms for privacy. The first year we never used them! We would ask families if they wanted to move for privacy and they would say that they preferred to stay in the showroom. I think the openness and the atmosphere is less stressful than a private room. Keep in mind this is our experience only. We have since remodeled and do not have private family rooms but we can bring them into our office, again, no one has wanted this.
Interesting observations. I think by privacy I meant more in the sense of off the beaten path privacy. American Restoration comes to mind in that they have created almost a shrine to americana that creates a unique environment for their custom work. Orange County Choppers had a similar “pilgrimage” feel to it for a long time, though its current headquarters look very mall-ish.
It’s always a challenge to figure out how to balance visibility with other consumer experience needs. In the long run though, you will probably want to have more control over your location. Retail leases can be tricky to maintain.
Looks like you’re having fun (for the most part) though and that’s more than half the battle.
Good luck!