Marks & Spencer to Offer Funeral Services

Retail giant Marks & Spencer is branching out, after registering a remarkable boost in sales over the past year. A new £900 million expansion plan announced the other day will offer customers M&S branded funerals.

According to the Daily Mail, choosing fancier, customizable funeral services is the coolest trend right now among the rich and famous, and M&S is looking to capitalize on it with this bold expansion plan.

M&S will not be the only major player on the market to offer this type of services to customers, since, if this goes through as expected, it will have to compete for first place with The Co-operative.

“Funerals could be offered under M&S’s St Michael brand, which was dropped from most of the store’s products a decade ago but is still seen as a kitemark of quality,” the Mail writes.

“M&S hopes to capitalize on a trend for increasingly personalized funeral arrangements, with customers no longer feeling restricted to a traditional church service with hymns and a plain wood coffin in a black hearse,” the same publication writes.

According to the same publication, The Co-op offers a wide range of services, from the color and material for the coffin, to a template for the obituary that runs in the local paper and even customizable headstones.

A “Gold” funeral with The Co-op goes for about £3,000, which is more than excellent proof of how lucrative the market is turning out to be.

And that’s not all that M&S plans for the future, since it’s also looking to branch out in other, similarly surprising areas, the aforementioned publication notes.

“Recently, M&S signaled a move into sales of solar panels and double-glazing, while it already offers a home energy service. The firm also plans to plough money into building new stores both in the UK and overseas,” the Mail says.

Also recently, M&S launched a new line of Bodymax control pants – for men, because they too need help with controlling a little flab on the belly and the backside.