Orkin is an American pest control company that was founded in 1901 by Otto Orkin. Since 1964, the company has been owned by Rollins Inc. Orkin has held research collaborations with universities around the country and with organizations like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) dating back to 1990 for pest biology research and pest-related disease studies.
History
Otto the Rat Man Orkin was founded in Walnutport, Pennsylvania in 1901 by Otto Orkin, who began selling rat poison door-to-door at age 14. One of six children of a Latvian immigrant family, Orkin was responsible since an early age for shooting and poisoning rats to keep them out of the family's food stores and away from their farm animals.Kirk, p.11 At age 12, Orkin began experimenting with different methods to poison rats in order to discover the most effective ones.Kirk, p.12 At the age of 14 Orkin borrowed 50 cents from his parents to buy arsenic in bulk, and he began consulting with apothecaries about the best proportions and mixtures to use.Kirk, p.16 His initial rat poison formulas contained a combination of arsenic and phosphorus paste, mixed with fresh food scraps or red-dyed flour or sugar (so that it would not be mistaken as edible).Kirk, p.18 He began offering his preparations to his neighbors for free.
Orkin carried in what would become his signature black satchel a number of measured amounts of poison in paper bags that bore the word POISON along with a drawing of a skull and crossbones. If the customer was satisfied with the effectiveness of Orkin's rat poison and wanted more to use, only then would he charge them for his service.Kirk, p.17 Within six months, Orkin had several regular customers.
Orkin began expanding his business outside his hometown by taking advantage of its proximity to the Lehigh Railway, which ran from New York City to Buffalo. This allowed for easy travel to nearly anywhere in the United States. Orkin chose to travel south.Kirk, p.20 His research had led him to determine that Richmond, Virginia was a city that did not have an established extermination business, and so in 1909, Orkin arrived there and started to establish not only his poison sales business in the area, but an extermination service business, as well.Kirk, p.21
Orkin found that it was much more practical and economical to perform a single "clean-out" service and then return regularly to ensure the pests could no longer secure a foothold in a building than it was to perform a full "clean-out" service once or twice a year.Kirk, p.22 It was also during this time that Orkin sought to elevate the perception of his occupation by launching a public relations campaign that touted extermination services as necessary to good sanitation.Kirk, p.25 Though Orkin had maintained an unofficial office in a Richmond boarding house since 1909, Orkin's business remained "officially" headquartered at a post office address in Easton, Pennsylvania until 1912, when he established an official office in downtown Richmond.Kirk, p.27
It was from here that Orkin received his first government contract in 1925 with the Army Corps of Engineers to mitigate the rat infestation of the Wilson Dam in Muscle Shoals, Alabama.Kirk, p.37 On the way to Muscle Shoals, Orkin stopped in Atlanta, Georgia, a city that had no real exterminator business presence at the time. He was thus inspired to move his headquarters to the city.Kirk, p.40
Orkin Exterminating Company
"Orkin The Rat Man" became the Orkin Exterminating Company when it moved its headquarters to Atlanta, Georgia in January 1926 (though it would maintain the brand of "Orkin The Rat Man" in Virginia until 1956).Kirk, p.46 The office opened at the 609 Candler building on January 2 with Otto Orkin as president and his nephew, Theodore Oser, as vice president of sales. By April of that year, Orkin serviced over 24 major clients in the city of Atlanta, which he listed proudly in advertisements he took out in the Atlanta Chamber of Commerce's publication, The City Builder.Kirk, p.41 In August 1926, the now-familiar red and white Orkin diamond logo began appearing on advertisements and official company letterheads to replace The Rat Man.Kirk, p.42
The company's offices moved to a larger space at 82 Courtland Street in 1929, and by 1930, Orkin had 13 branches in eight southern states. The branch offices were mostly run by relatives who had worked for him in the original Atlanta and Richmond offices. To start a new branch office, Otto would invest $5,000 (equivalent to $ in ), from which a salary of $50 per week ($ in ) was paid to the branch partner (and to Otto while he helped set up the branch), premises were secured, staff was hired, and purchases of a service truck, tools, supplies, and advertising were made.Kirk, p.43 The balance of the funds was typically enough to keep the branch solvent while it built a customer base to become self-sufficient, but occasionally funds ran low and the branch could not afford to pay Otto his salary. In these cases, he accepted an "IOU," and collected the interest on this and his initial investment once the office began to make money and applied the money to the investment in another branch.
Orkin expanded its methods and its service offerings throughout the 1930s to include fumigation and termite removal. Beginning in 1937, Otto sought to centralize his business.Kirk, p.63 Prior to this, each branch operated mostly autonomously, adhering to most of the same standards and systems, but this independence caused some confusion among consumers, many of whom believed each Orkin branch was an independently owned franchise. This consolidation helped every Orkin branch be recognized as part of a single company and centralized all national billing through the Atlanta office. These changes spurred further state-by-state growth, moving outward from the core of southern states the company was already in.Kirk, p.65 By 1940, Orkin had 50 branches in 14 states, including branch offices in nearly every major southern city. Gross sales that year were around $1.5 million (equivalent to $ in ).
World War II and postwar growth
The United States' entry into World War II in 1941 posed challenges to Orkin in the form of shortages of personnel, chemicals and supplies. In the particular face of personnel shortages, Ted Oser worked with the National Pest Control Association founder, Bill Buettner, to meet with legislators, rationing boards, and other government agencies to convince them to classify pest control as an "essential service" during the war.Kirk, p.70 Such classification would afford Orkin (and other pest control companies) draft deferments and placement on a preference list to receive chemicals and supplies such as gasoline, tires, and food ration points to manufacture rat bait. Pest control became one of only two service industries operating during the war to be declared as "essential"—the other was mortuary service. The war also caused a growth in the number of military contracts that Orkin took on—the company had over 150 military establishments under contract for regular bed bug fumigation and pest control, and many railroads maintained around-the-clock service agreements that had Orkin pest control teams sleeping in shifts on cots in the rail yards.Kirk, p.72 Pest control services for homes and businesses also remained in demand on top of all of the additional wartime service that Orkin was providing. This overall increase in demand strained the company's resources, particularly since the chemicals that were most readily available for pest control were not as effective and required more frequent treatments, which taxed the already limited workforce.Kirk, p.73 In order to maximize resources, many branch offices were consolidated, some accounts were serviced less often, and service providers traveled further and more often. Despite wartime shortages, however, Orkin not only survived, but it actually grew. In 1945, the company had record gross sales of $2.098 million (equivalent to $ in ) and maintained 82 branches in 14 states.Kirk, p.74
Following the war, the pest control industry's introduction of new, more powerful chemicals for extermination led Orkin to hire academics and experts in the field of public health, entomology, chemistry, and sanitation. Among these hires was Herman Fellton, formerly of the U.S. Public Health Service, as Orkin's technical director.Kirk, p.80 Felton centralized and standardized the purchase, use, and storage of chemicals and supplies, conducting four-day training courses and developing printed instructions for the use and handling of all chemicals. The cultural change also had effects on the literal appearance of the company—the company moved once again into new offices at 590 Courtland Street and the adjacent building at 591 Peachtree.Kirk, p.75 For the first time, the executive offices were separate from the service department, with the former in the Peachtree building, and the latter in the Courtland building.Kirk, p.76 In 1947, Orkin began issuing company-wide uniforms for its service technicians that followed the professional appearance that Otto had long required of his employees and bore the red diamond Orkin logo on the hats, jackets and shirts.Kirk, p.96
The introduction of new, more effective chemicals for pest control led to the expansion of Orkin's termite and fumigation services, in particular. Following the goals set by Felton, Orkin recognized the need to properly handle chemicals and was instrumental in emphasizing safety practices within the pest control industry, with Oser being named president of the NPCA in 1944 on a safety platform.Kirk, p.87Kirk, p.88 Oser was also instrumental in forcing the shift in both industry and public attitudes that hiring a pest control service was not something to be ashamed of, but rather something that was a valuable service that protected the health and welfare of people and property.
By 1950, Orkin had grown to 141 branches in 20 states, with over 1,000 employees and $6 million (equivalent to $ in ) in sales.Kirk, p.91 The company's growth exploded throughout the 1950s and is largely attributed to Orkin's profit-sharing and incentive programs for its employees.Kirk, p.97 Many branch and district managers made several times what Otto himself did each year, and many employees became millionaires through Orkin's profit-sharing. Gross revenues more than doubled to $15.6 million in 1956.Kirk, p.98 The 1950s also brought a new advertising medium—television. The cartoon mascot of "Otto the Orkin Man", an anthropomorphized pesticide spray can, and his accompanying jingle became one of the most recognizable advertisements in the United States.Kirk, p.101 The boom in positive public relations for the company and the public interest in the real Otto Orkin that the television advertisements generated affected everything from branding on the caps worn by service technicians and the trucks (both now bore the "Otto" character as well as the Orkin diamond) to the details of the company headquarters' relocation to 713 West Peachtree Street in 1951. Every expense of the move was publicly reported; the building was modernly appointed, and upon its opening, Orkin staged an open house for the public to tour the offices and enjoy a variety of entertainment and exhibits.Kirk, p.104
Company shakeups