As co-owner of Truckee Meadows Pest Control, Jodi Ashby wasn’t sure what to expect last spring when the pandemic shut down most industries and businesses. “We kind of went into a panic mode,” said Ashby, who owns the company with her husband, Chris. “Our customers that are restaurants shut down and didn’t have any cash flow, so they had to cancel us. And then my residential customers freaked out and didn’t want anybody near them, so they would cancel their service.” Three months later, however, as spring turned to summer, customers came crawling out of the woodwork. “People are at home noticing their pests a lot more,” Ashby said. “So we have a ton of mouse calls. And people are less tolerant of the ants that are coming into their kitchen or their bathrooms because they are there all the time and don’t want those pests.” To get unwanted guests out of their homes, customers began deciding it was OK to let a pest control technician onto their property during a global pandemic. Helping matters, technicians are already accustomed to wearing PPE and staying safe distances away from homeowners. “We treat properties from the exterior, and if we’re doing our job correctly, we should never have to go inside,” Ashby said. “And everything we do is paperless. So we never really have to see the customer.”
Jodi Ashby
While many local businesses were forced to shut down or limit operations last year to mitigate spread of the virus, pest control companies like TMPC, which serves the greater Reno-Tahoe region, have experienced both an uptick in demand and uninterrupted business throughout the pandemic. Meanwhile, at Clark Pest Control, the phones have not stopped ringing at its 27 California locations and its branch in Reno-Sparks.
It’s not only the loyal customers calling. The company saw requests for new service increase by 15% in 2020, said Darren Van Steenmyk, director of learning and technical services at Clark Pest Control. “It was like a light switch,” Van Steenmyk said. “When there was a specific weather event like a little heat spike or when it got really hot for the first time last year, then it just turned — and didn’t lighten up since then.” More than ever, wasps, roaches, rodents and spiders are more apparent to parents and kids working and schooling from home, tackling home improvement projects, and spending more time in backyards. “They began to notice stuff about their house during the day that they never noticed before,” Van Steenmyk said. “They noticed sounds coming from places that they never really paid attention to before.” As a result, Clark Pest Control “cannot hire fast enough” to keep up with the demand, Van Steenmyk said. In 2020, the company brought on four new people in Reno-Sparks, growing to a team of 20 technicians at its only Nevada branch. Van Steenmyk said the population growth in Reno-Sparks has also led to a surge of people in newly built homes requesting service “much earlier” than normal. What’s more, in response to the pandemic, Clark Pest Control launched a new disinfection service last year. Van Steenmyk said the requests for that service in Reno-Sparks were “significant.” In fact, the company was even hired by a local homebuilder to perform weekly disinfection service in their model homes. Van Steenmyk said a number of Clark Pest Control’s commercial clients, especially those who closed their buildings, put their accounts on hold for months. When many reopened their doors, though, the need for service could not be ignored. “We found that there’s quite a few places where we walk into now, and it looks like it’s been neglected,” Van Steenmyk said. “And so, the number of rats and mice and cockroaches, those populations exploded because they were unattended, if you will, so we had to make up for some of that.” Truckee Meadows Pest Control saw the same trend from its commercial clients. “They’ll put their account on pause but then they’ll notice that their bugs are back, and it’s service that they have to have,” Ashby said. Yet, the slowdown at the onset of the pandemic prevented TMPC from hitting its revenue goals in 2020. The company, which launched in 2017, generated $700,000 in revenue last year, narrowly eclipsing its 2019 mark of $650,000, according to Ashby. “That was the first year that we didn’t triple in size (revenue wise),” Ashby said. “Our goal was to hit a million (dollars) in our fourth year. Our business had been growing exponentially up till that point.” To help make up for the slowdown last spring, TMPC has increased its advertising budget, said Ashby, adding: “I feel like it’s helped for brand recognition — we would like to a be a household name.” So far this year, Ashby said business has been slow. She expects that to change soon. “We are starting to pick up with this warm weather,” she said. “Usually in spring, we’ll have a huge influx like a light switch gets turned on. Last year it was like a motor trying to start, turning over and turning over. I’m hoping for a little bit better of a start to the spring this year.”
Jodi Ashby