Lavendla
Funerals, family law, grief support. One platform. 75% revenue growth and a #2 market position in two years.
When a family loses someone, the practical demands arrive immediately and all at once, funeral arrangements, legal paperwork, emotional support. Lavendla's bet was that one company could handle all three with care and without the chaos. When I joined as CPO and CMO, my job was to make that promise real and make sure people could find it.
Our mission was to capture a 5% market share and secure a top-three position against Sweden’s funeral giant, Fonus.
We aimed to prove that “Vi gör det svåra lättare” (“We make the difficult easier”) could translate into measurable market leadership.
What we built
I led dual transformation efforts across product development and strategic marketing. We evolved Lavendla’s digital-first platform to seamlessly blend self-service planning tools with personal touchpoints, allowing clients to arrange everything from their laptop and then switch to video calls or in-person meetings without friction.
The three services — funeral planning, family law, and grief counseling — each attract families at different moments, with different needs and different levels of urgency. The product challenge was connecting them without making any one of them feel like an upsell. A family arranging a funeral shouldn't feel sold to on grief therapy. A widow navigating estate law shouldn’t have to re-explain her situation to three separate teams. We built the platform so the context traveled with the customer.
Marketing three services in this category meant writing for people at very different points in a hard experience. Funeral planning searches are urgent and practical. Family law searches are anxious and confused. Grief support searches are often the last thing someone does before asking for help. Each needed its own voice, its own content, its own entry point, but they all had to feel like Lavendla.
The memorial pages initiative became a cornerstone feature, allowing families to create lasting digital tributes while generating charitable donations.
I managed a cross-functional team of five specialists spanning marketing, SEO, development, and product design. We expanded our operations beyond Sweden into Norway, Denmark, and Finland, adapting our digital platform and messaging to meet each market’s specific regulatory and cultural requirements.
Our nationwide network expanded to 150 dedicated advisors, ensuring a local presence that supported our digital reach.
Company
Role
Chief Product Officer, 2020-2022
Milestones
Increased revenue by +75% in 2020 to 71 million SEK. Mainly due to marketing, localization, and product optimization. I helped make Lavendla the #2 brand in Sweden behind Fonus.
Launched Lavendla in Norway, Denmark, and Finland.
Planned and executed product and marketing efforts to establish memorial pages in 2021, collecting over 4 million SEK for various charities.
Managed a distributed team of 5+ team members across development, design, SEO, and growth.
Swedish Lavendla website, lavendla.se, was localized in Denmark and Norway.
Highlights and wins
We achieved 75% year-over-year revenue growth, reaching 71 million SEK and establishing Lavendla as the #2 funeral services brand in Sweden. The memorial pages became something we hadn’t fully anticipated, families using them not just to mark a death but to handle what came after. Donations, tributes, connections to legal advice. Over 4 million SEK raised for charity. Sometimes a feature tells you more about your customers than any research does.
Customer satisfaction metrics validated our approach, and over 7,000 published reviews maintained a 4.8/5 average rating, making Lavendla one of the highest-rated operators in Nordic funeral and estate services.
Reflections
Most companies serve customers at their best; excited, motivated, ready to buy. Lavendla’s customers come to us on some of the worst days of their lives. That changes everything. The copy, the UX, the response times, the tone of a confirmation email. There’s no category where the details matter more.
The hardest thing wasn’t building any one of the three services. It was making funerals, family law, and grief support feel like they belonged under the same roof without any of them feeling like an afterthought. That’s a brand problem as much as a product problem. Turns out they do belong together. Life just hadn’t organized it that way yet.
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“Jonas kommer bidra med en enorm erfarenhet men också en unik spetskompetens. I våra ögon är han en av Sveriges vassaste produktägare, varför det var ett solklart val att knyta honom till Lavendla när vi fick möjligheten.”
Jakob Nordström, Founder & CEO
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