| Profession: | Funeral Management Consultant and Funeral Home Evaluator |
| Education: | Bachelor of Arts Degree with a double major in Economics and Psychology from DePauw University, Greencastle, Indiana |
| Other: | Management Consultant to Funeral Service since 1966 |
| 1966-1977: | Batesville Casket Company - In top ten percent of sales force. |
| 1977-1981: | President, CEO and Co-Founder of Professional Funeral Management - Accounting and Consulting Services to Funeral Directors. |
| 1981 to Present: | An independent Funeral Management Consultant performing management and financial analysis in multiple areas of funeral home operations. This includes hands-on experience, involving financial analysis and profitability improvement for more than 500 Funeral Service firms throughout the United States. |
| 1991 to present: | Mergers/Acquisitions of funeral homes. Espich negotiated over $265,000,000 of funeral home and cemetery transactions, representing both buyers and sellers. Prepared Funeral Home Valuations numbering over 250 for estate planning, employee buy-outs, buy/sell agreements, litigation concerns, and both the sale and purchase of funeral businesses. |
In his initial Batesville interview Dale Espich was advised of low profits in the funeral business and the company's concern thereof. Somehow this hit a very sensitive spot since a very close Espich family friend was a very successful funeral director and he had played a significant part mentoring Dale in his pursuit of several Scouting merit badges and a deep friendship. It was obviously a naïve thought but Espich would make the improvement of funeral profits a major goal. It was the prime reason for leaving a top ten million dollar Batesville territory and six figure commission to start a Consulting biz from scratch.
In early 1977 the FTC was already on the warpath towards funeral service with some rather outlandish claims---a la Jessica Mitford's American Way of Death. With the objective of getting the true facts to the FTC, Dale called his friend newly-elected U.S. Senator Don Riegle. In just a few weeks on Saturday morning MFDA prexy Ed Lynch, Jack Jorgeson MFDA Exec and Dale were in Detroit at the Federal Building on Woodard for a two hour meeting with Riegle (he came alone) The Senator listened carefully, took copious notes, asked many questions and requested more specific information. He gave assurance the right information and facts would be given to the right people personally.
Nationally recognized as a leading consultant to funeral service, Espich has published on subjects of Business Valuations, Merchandising, Managing and Pricing for Profit, Cost Analysis, and others. Specific
Areas of expertise include Management Analysis, Budgeting/Business Plans for Profit, Negotiating/Mergers & Acquisitions, Employee Training & Incentive Programs and Casket Merchandising.
Espich has conducted over one hundred workshops on Communication, Budgets/Business Plans, Pricing, Casket Merchandising and others for several state associations, NFDA, OGR, NSM and others. He stays up to date on the latest cutting-edge methodologies in valuations and negotiations and has participated in over 300 hours of continuing education. Member of Institute of Management Accountants.
In late summer, 1984, Aurora Casket owners attended an Indy Communication workshop and invited Dale to visit and tour the very impressive Aurora Casket plant. Talks ensued and Dale to a retainer to teach, train casket merchandising techniques to each of the sixty Aurora sales reps. 6-8 reps at the home office for a week of classes, Espich to travel with each in territory, design plans, and present back to customer. Decision next was to bring whole sales force back for another week of "How-to-partner" with customers, thence another round of reps learning merchandising design techniques. Espich also worked as Special Consultant to Major Client firms advising on profits, merchandising, pricing, etc.
The Aurora engagement was 50% of Espich's time and the balance spent with several large separate client firms with merchandising, Cost/pricing/ profits monthly reports and annual business plans.
The Aurora program wound down circa 90-91 with all field reps in class an average of four separate weeks.
Espich is rated an Airline Transport Pilot and used personal aircraft throughout his business career Accumulating over 9,000 hours of flying time.
Provided expert witness testimony for multiple large entities, individuals involved in litigation, divorce, etc. and was the key expert witness on Valuations for the plaintiff in the Mississippi lawsuit in which the plaintiffwas awarded a $500,000,000 judgment against Loewen.
He recognizes duty to give back and has served as a board member of Corunna schools, Corunna Educational Foundation, Chaired 1974 Corunna High School Bond Campaign, Kiwanis, Lifetime member American Legion, Congregational Church, Shiawassee Arts Council, Shiawassee Family YMCA (Board Chair). He founded Get Fit! Shiawassee, a non-profit to fight childhood obesity, brought a mentoring program for girls in grades 3,4,5 (Girls on the Run International) to the local area, and served as Board Chair (2014-15) of Memorial Healthcare, a 150-bed acute care hospital in Owosso. Selected as Grand Marshal of the Curwood Festival in 2000, named the Don Trap Award as Volunteer of the Year in 2009, and chosen as Memorial Healthcare Humanitarian of The Year 2016.
