If you work in the funeral service profession, you may enjoy one part of the profession more than other parts.

For example, you may prefer the peace and quiet that comes with embalming and disposition. Or on the flip side of the coin, you may enjoy talking with families and leading family arrangements more on a daily basis.

Brian Bowser truly believes that you can grow personally and professionally by embracing both.

Brian is the owner of Bowser Family Funeral Homes. Learn about his journey in funeral service and hear about how his funeral homes have leveraged Gather to build a lasting legacy.

Brian Bowser’s Journey to Funeral Service

An Arkansas native and Razorback fan, Brian Bowser grew up helping his grandfather (a postmaster) who volunteered for visitations at their local funeral home in Cave City; he opened doors for visitations, worked funerals, and helped with the nitty gritty tasks around the funeral home.

Fast forward to later in life – Bowser eventually decided that he wanted to switch away from his first career, and moved back home to be closer to home. After being encouraged to see if he could land a full-time job helping at the local funeral home, he immediately fell in love after being brought on board.

With some encouragement from his wife, he decided to go to college, pass his national board exams, and become a certified funeral director. After working in North Arkansas for 10 years, he decided that he wanted to take the next step and own a funeral home.

The Legacy of Bowser Family Funeral Homes

Brian Bowser and his wife struck gold when they discovered a funeral home for sale in Mena, Arkansas – formerly known as Hall Funeral Service. They were able to purchase it in 2009, without any help.

After a few years, they changed the name of the funeral home to Bowser Family Funeral Home with the hope that one of their children would want to take over the business. From there, Brian put his focus towards a big objective with their very own funeral home: build trust with the people in their community.

“So we just went in and put our nose down. We started building trust with families. When we first took over the funeral home, numbers were down for the first four years. And over the last five or six years, we’ve turned the page. We’ve become the funeral home that people are trusting more than before,” Bowser recalls.

In 2021, he and his wife purchased a second funeral home location 60 miles away in Broken Bow, Oklahoma.

From there, the rest is history.

Funeral Arrangements, Embalming, or Both?

As mentioned before, Brian Bowser thinks that embalming is a trade skill that needs some love from the rest of the profession. While he’s confident in his rapport-building skills with families, his favorite part of the work is embalming.

To him, embalming is truly an art.

“Ultimately, if the embalming is not good, it’s not a good experience for the families. We can’t expect people to choose traditional burials if the embalming isn’t good.”

However, Brian Bowser knows that funeral directors need to sharpen their skills in all areas of the funeral service profession – including family arrangements.

Bowser Family Funeral Homes Wants to Simplify Family Collaboration

Family arrangements truly are at the heart of funeral service, but they’re evolving as time goes on. More people prefer digital and remote capabilities instead of faxing over documents.

While Bowser Family Funeral Homes enjoys meeting with families, their team also enjoys simplifying family collaboration for every service.

This is where Gather enters the equation for Brian Bowser and his team.

How Gather Has Impacted Business

Now that Gather is integrated into their business, the team at Bowser Family Funeral Homes is able to store all of their data in one central, digital platform. As a result, all features across both locations are streamlined:

• Contracts
• Accounting
• Pre-Need Cases
• Unique Service Details
• Arrangement Conferences

He knows every detail about every service. In a lot of instances when he makes arrangements with pre-need families, he goes ahead and makes arrangements with them because he can record all the information he needs and it’s automatically stored in the cloud for his team to use.

Experience The Gather Difference

Are you looking to get a stronger ROI from your funeral home software? Gather may be a great fit for you and your team – especially if you’re looking to build a legacy similar to Brian Bowser and Bowser Family Funeral Homes.

Schedule a demo with our team to learn about some of our game-changing features, or call us at (888) 492-2697 with your questions.