If your business has some bugs to work out, a B.C. firm has just the recipe to clean up your bottom line.

Armed with glue boards, bird spikes and rat traps, Tammy Tonn and David Pallen venture forth each day to help rid businesses in the Lower Mainland of life’s less desirable creatures.

Tonn and Pallen are co-owners and operators of Integrated Pest Supplies Ltd. in New Westminster, B.C., a company that supplies the pest control industry with a variety of products for capturing and relocating skunks, squirrels and raccoons, to devices to permanently eliminate mice and rats.

It is definitely a niche business. “Nobody says they want to grow up and be in pest control – unless you live in the States,” says Tonn, who says the industry there is very large and established.

Jan Mansfield photo, Business Edge
Tammy Tonn and David Pallen with their popular bird spike, which helps discourage landings.

Pallen got started in business in 1979 when he and a friend started getting rid of fleas and wasps for customers as a part- time job while attending college. The business grew to 20 employees and had major contracts including large hotels, breweries and Expo 86.

Five years ago they sold the firm to U.S.-based Orkin Pest Control, and Tonn and Pallen started Integrated Pest Supplies, now the only independent supplier west of Toronto. Most of their customers are based in B.C., where the temperate climate makes pests a problem year round, but they also have customers in Alberta.

Besides pest-control companies, customers include SPCAs, humane societies and universities. They recently shipped several hundred squirrel traps to the Yukon for a study being conducted by McGill University of Montreal.

The couple preaches integrated pest management (IPM) to their customers, advising them to use products such as glue boards, dust baits and traps in place of chemicals. “We don’t want to be spraying unnecessarily,” says Tonn. “The days of the spray jockey are long gone.”

One of their fastest-selling products is a bird spike that deters birds from sitting on ledges.

“You’re not harming the birds. We’re not about that. We want to make sure that we protect the birds but just move them to another location,” says Tonn.

Their largest customer is B.C. Hydro, which wants to prevent birds from landing on certain areas so they don’t harm themselves or get electrocuted and cause power blackouts.

Tonn says she expects business will increase even more as Vancouver, with its huge pigeon population, cleans up the city in preparation for the 2010 Olympics. Property managers don’t want the droppings spilling down the front of the buildings or landing on cars or where people walk, she says, because there can be many parasites in bird droppings.

The couple run the business with one full-time employee, a part-time bookkeeper and occasional help from 13-year-old daughter Katie. Sons James, 21, and Chris, 19, have also worked in the family-run company, and their five-year-old Malti-poo Lucy also puts in regular hours at the office. The volume of business has tripled in the last five years.

“We knew we’d be OK, but we didn’t know we’d be as successful as we have been,” says Tonn.

For the foreseeable future, the couple plans to keep the business running Monday to Friday even though they know they could expand even more. “Big doesn’t mean better,” says Pallen, though he adds, “if other things come along we’ll look at it.”

“Retire – I can’t even imagine that,” adds Tonn. “We are very, very fortunate. Absolutely.”