Malcolm Parry’s Trade Talk
Funeral home chain finds success at Dunbar and 18th, while film production company sticks to the kitchen
When Martin Brothers Funeral Services went looking for a new location for the family business, a former Starbucks was an easy choice.
DEAD TO RIGHTS: When Dale Martin Jr. looked to house an outlet of his family business at the epicentre of Vancouver’s affluent neighbourhoods, a former Starbucks site at Dunbar and 18th was the answer.
“The No. 1 reason people choose a funeral home is location,” he said in the 1,650- square- foot premises Martin Brothers Funeral Services opened Aug. 26. “And we think this is a great location.”
There are 14 other such sites for the outfit English immigrants Ben and Harry Martin opened in Minot, Sask., in 1904 and moved to Lethbridge, Alta., three years later. Ten came after 1996, when Martin founded the Caring Group to create funeral- homemanagement software. Profits were scant, though, so 70 per cent owner Martin paid $ 5 million in 2005 for eight funeral homes — including ones in Smithers and Hope — that had been part of Ray Loewen’s once- huge chain. He’s negotiating for four more, and hopes to add a crematory to the only one the City of Vancouver allows to operate here but sold to Texas- based Service Corporation International. “Every municipal centre in the world has them,” Martin said, including Edmonton’s 12, Calgary’s 11 and even five in Lethbridge.
Martin also expects the Caring Group to launch an initial public offering on the TSX Venture Exchange next year with a view to raising $ 100 million. That would be the reverse of Torontobased Arbor Memorial Service’ privatizing its 82- funeral- home operation last year. Some cash that shareholder Fairfax Financial Holdings received likely went into its agreement to pay $ 4.7 billion to privatize struggling smartphone maker BlackBerry.
As for technology, Caring Group software lets Martin’s clients design and price funerals just as build- yourcar programs simplify automakers’ lengthy option lists. Funerals run from $ 3,400 to $ 30,000, with most in the $ 8,000- to-$ 12,000 range. When research showed that 28 per cent of clients favoured scattering ashes at sea, Martin went out and bought the 22- metre Queenship motor yacht Pacific Ceremony featured on the firm’s options software. Rowing its dinghy may remind him of racing days at Brentwood College, where he was friends with now- steakhouse mogul David Aisenstat.
Subsequent commerce studies at the University of Lethbridge ended in third year when he succeeded his father, who was ill, as Martin Brothers’ president. Somewhat counterproductively given the family enterprise, the latter is still hale at age 83 “and sharp as a tack,” his son said.
“He always asks: ‘ What are your numbers like? When do I get a raise?’” The proposed IPO may answer that.
• BACK TO BASICS: Many television series are set around the kitchen sink. In Michael Shepard’s case, they’re developed there. That’s in the Dunbar home he shares with wife of 18 years, Lesley, and sons aged 15, 13 and eight. It’s also where he reviews Canadian comedy, drama and other scripts, contracts, proposals and suchlike as owner of January- founded Mindset Television Inc.
The name came from a Vancouver Sun crossword clue that former palliative- care nurse Lesley solved in the selfsame kitchen. But its genesis came from Shepard parlaying his UBC theatre degree into a sales job at the Coast 1040 radio station, now Q104. Expo 86’ s related nightlife boom got him developing entertainment content.
A subsequent hitch with Torontobased Canamedia moved him to television and, in 2001, connected him to Tim Gamble. The latter had left the Peace Arch Entertainment Group he’d founded in 1981 and, with investors poised, was ready to start anew.
Thus began 12 years of Shepard heading the rights- management firm Thunderbird Films, whose series included 80 episodes of global- selling Mr. Young, 13 of End Game, and Chris Haddock’s lauded Da Vinci’s Inquest. Shot in 2012, its Package Deal sitcom will premiere on Citytv Sept. 30 with Pamela Anderson and comedian Eugene Levy in some episodes.
Thunderbird had its own drama last year when Lions Gate Entertainment’s zillionaire founder Frank Giustra took a major stake. It then signalled a growing role in TV and film production by acquiring Matthew O’Connor, Lisa Richardson and Tom Rowe’s nine- year- old Reunion Pictures.
Shepard bailed in January, retaining equity in Thunderbird, which in turn retained first- look rights on his projects. He left “to do what I want to do, what I do best: sell to Canadian broadcasters.”
He showed an ambitious pro forma to mentor Peter Sussman. That veteran producer- distributor and former Alliance Atlantis shareholder- executive answered crisply: “Don’t hire anyone. Don’t raise money. Work out of your kitchen.”
For Lesley, “It was a shock at first. He was in my face, and in the kitchen where I am. But now I do the bookkeeping and the banking, and I’m also his sounding board. It works well because I am involved.”
“It helps that we’re in love,” Shepard added.
He seemingly loves Pandemic, too. That’s the first of seven novels by St. Paul’s Hospital emergency physician Dan Kalla, who was Shepard’s best friend at Strathcona Elementary. When a feature- film option on the medical thriller lapsed, Shepard signed name- brand screenwriter Donald Martin for an eight- hour miniseries that, given Pandemic’s worldwide locations, should cost $ 24 million.
He has a handshake deal with Shaw Communications, said Shepard, who expects European script- financing “in two months … and finding the script producible another six to eight months.”
Meanwhile he has “10 to 15 other projects on the go.” The include a longdormant one for the animated show Rusty Get Nailed. Not in the kitchen, apparently.