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Overview of the tombstone production market
Currently, the funeral services market is filled with relatively small offices of funeral services. As a rule, they offer not only the actual organization and conduct of the funeral, but also the installation (installation) of tombstones.
However, in the vast majority of cases, ritual offices do not produce tombstones and tombstones themselves, but only offer a ready-made version purchased in advance, or, having agreed with the customer on the sketch, they order the monument from the appropriate company, which receives the maximum profit from its sale: production, as you know , much more profitable trade and services.
But before you open your own production for the manufacture of tombstones, you need to carefully study the local market conditions so that the situation does not develop, as in the provincial town N, described by Ilf and Petrov, where there were so many bureaus of funeral processions that it seemed that the inhabitants cities are born only to die immediately.
Too much competition is fatal for this type of production: the product is too specific, and the presence of two or three large producers (and often even one on the scale of a small city) practically dooms a new player who decides to enter the market to ruin. However, if there are already similar tombstone manufacturing companies in your city, do not be upset: as a rule, they specialize in different types of monuments: one, for example, in marble or granite, the second in metal and tin, and the third in concrete. Accordingly, the question immediately arises – what kind of tombstones is the most rational to manufacture?
It is necessary to consider the specifics of each type of production. Let’s start with tombstones made of metal or galvanized steel.
Such monuments are cheap and unpretentious in terms of production, however, there is also a flip side of the coin: there are simply no enterprises involved in the manufacture of such monuments – the low price makes pure production unprofitable, as a rule, such monuments are by-products of firms manufacturing tin products (various profiles, drains, buckets, etc. products) or professional welding organizations. As the main and only source of income for the organization, such monuments will not work.
The next option, granite, marble and other monuments made of facing rocks, can also hardly be called too profitable: equipment for processing such materials is not cheap, and the monuments themselves are sold relatively infrequently – they turn out to be too expensive, and not everyone can afford it.
In addition, enterprises of this profile have practically no possibility of additional earnings – except for the manufacture of commemorative plaques for buildings or one-time orders for bas-reliefs, etc. decorative elements. This does not mean, of course, that such a company will “burn out” upon opening – the business is very profitable, even taking into account the cost of equipment and material, which, as you know, is most often imported from other regions (Karelia, Leningrad Region) and even neighboring countries (in particular, Ukraine and Kazakhstan). But the optimal location for capital will be only large cities with a status not lower than the regional center, in which, with rare exceptions, such production has long been launched.
As you can see, the most promising is the production of tombstones from concrete: they are relatively cheap, can be decorated with the same granite, marble and similar elements, which will make them practically indistinguishable from granite and marble monuments, and metal ones are much more durable.
In addition, concrete monuments occupy a major niche in the funeral market, so entering it will not require much effort.
Production of tombstones: Necessary equipment
An important factor in the prospects for the discovery of concrete monuments is the cost of equipment used for their manufacture. In fact, it consists of only three units of technology, not counting the forms.
The main element is a forming vibrating table designed for compacting concrete mixtures. The technology for making a tombstone is as follows: liquid concrete is poured into the selected form, the form itself is fixed on a vibrating table, which, by vibrating, produces an easing and a gradual compaction of the mixture, which makes the monument more durable and resistant to the destructive effects of climate (wind and other types of erosion). ).
The table itself is the main production unit, which cannot be replaced by manual processing of the material. The remaining machines are intended only for the mechanization of labor and the reduction of the number of employees of the enterprise. The cost of this equipment is 55 thousand rubles.
The second most important is a vibrating sieve, with the help of which dry cement is sieved and lumps are removed from it, foreign impurities of a fraction larger than the cement mixture, which significantly reduce the quality of the product both in appearance (for example, small stones and paper from the bag can appear on the front side of the monument and spoil its design), and in terms of strength characteristics: poorly sifted cement during concreting can crack, due to slags, or burrow through, which is fraught with greater susceptibility to erosion.
Of course, a vibrating sieve can be replaced by manual sifting, but this is unprofitable for two reasons at once: firstly, the device will carry out this process much faster, more accurately and regardless of the “human factor”, and secondly, having bought a vibrating sieve once, your costs for the sifting process ends, while otherwise it will be necessary to keep a special person who will deal only with this, and who will have to pay wages, which at some point will exceed the costs of a vibrating sieve, especially since the cost of this equipment is only about 10 thousand rubles.
The third unit is a concrete mixer, which is also often referred to simply as a “concrete mixer”. This machine is known and familiar to many people who at least once in their life are faced with construction or at least watched the neighboring construction site from the windows of their house.
The preparation of the concrete mixture is the most important stage of the technological process, therefore manual mixing is absolutely unacceptable, since it cannot provide the normative consistency of the working mixture. In addition, the same principle applies to a concrete mixer as to a vibrating screen: the cost of the equipment is much lower than the cost of an auxiliary worker, even if one considers that he could screen and mix the concrete components by hand alone. The cost of portable concrete mixers is from 11.5 to 16 thousand rubles. depending on the volume of loading (in the described case, mixers for 130-165 liters are optimal in terms of power).
The last element of production equipment for the manufacture of tombstones are forms – special matrices, which are the standard for pouring concrete.
The forms are a little more complicated than with the rest of the tools: each of them (and there can be a lot of them, because it is impossible to make monuments of the same design and configuration all the time) will have to be purchased separately, and if the customer provides his own sketch, they will be ordered separately. However, in the second case, the cost of such a form is related to the selling price of products – piece goods, as you know, are always somewhat more expensive than mass goods.
The cost of one form is approximately from 18 to 20.5 thousand rubles, and at least a dozen of them should be purchased, at least for the basic assortment – some buyers will be satisfied with them, and the rest should be purchased as the business expands.
Prospects for the development of business for the manufacture of tombstones
As already mentioned, the business of making concrete gravestones is much more promising than the manufacture of marble or granite tombstones. Concrete works, especially artistic works, are more in demand than granite ones – these can be additional services, for example, pouring concrete into the same cells in a cemetery (quite often ordered service – both for aesthetic purposes, and in terms of practicality – such a grave requires the most minimal care), the production of busts and even monuments of the dead in full growth (also an important segment of the funeral business) and even such exotic areas as the production of concrete sarcophagi, crypts, etc.
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