Undercutting the Undertakers

As a result of a 1904 the been controlled largely by a cartel known as General Funerals. Entrepreneur Michel Leclerc thinks that is unfair. Says the businessman: "A bride can choose her wedding dress anywhere she pleases. We should be able to choose our coffins anywhere we please as well."

So, at prices 10% to 50% less than those charged by the organized undertakers (Paris average: $1,170), Leclerc will give clients the ultimate sendoff. His prices include a coffin, a golden hearse, pallbearers and burial. But the price, not the frills, he feels, is the attraction.

One industrious Leclerc franchiser in the town of Angouleme, who has conducted 409 funerals in defiance of the law, was fined $116,000 by the Bordeaux court of appeals. At one Leclerc funeral in Charleville-Mezieres, the family of the deceased received threatening phone calls and the funeral director was roughed up. Leclerc, though, insists he will go on offering his services.