On April 8, 1861, John Wanamaker opened a men's clothing store at Sixth and Market in Philadelphia with his brother-in-law Nathan Brown and a rule almost nobody else was running. The number on the tag is the number, everybody pays it, and if you don't like the coat you bring it back.
Before that, the price on a label was an opening bid. What you paid came down to how the clerk sized you up on the way in: how you were dressed, how badly you seemed to need it, whether you were any good at pretending to leave. Two men could buy the identical coat an hour apart, pay wildly different money, and neither would ever find out.
Wanamaker didn't invent one price. A.T. Stewart was already running it in New York by 1846. What he did was print the number, hang it on the merchandise, and make it the entire personality of the store. Within a generation, haggling over a coat looked deranged.
The tag won almost everywhere. There's one purchase Americans still make roughly the 1860 way, and it's one of the biggest of their lives.
Since 1984, federal law has required every funeral home in the country to hand you an itemized price list in person and quote prices over the phone. Roughly 12% of buyers call to ask. The Consumer Federation of America surveyed 1,046 homes and found 18% posting prices online, with identical services running 400% to 500% apart in the same city. Direct cremation in New York City starts at $495 and tops out at $10,200.
Nobody has done the boring part. A volunteer group in western Massachusetts mailed 83 funeral homes a letter asking for their price lists, with a stamped envelope to send it back in, and got 78 returns. That was the whole method.
Collect and reconcile the lists for one metro, publish the true totals for families, and sell competitive benchmarks back to the directors. Fifty independents at $99 to $199 a month is $5K to $10K MRR in a single city, before you sell one lead.
Read the full playbook here:
Federal law has required funeral price disclosure since 1984. Only 12% of families ask, 18% of homes post online, and identical cremations vary fivefold in the same market.
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