[2008 Leadership Profiles] Jack Marlowe

Jack Marlowe’s unassuming and self-effacing personality might not be at the top of the list of personality traits for many entrepreneurs.

“I think I’m kind of ordinary,” he says when asked about himself. But Marlowe has quietly built a solid company in the Pacific Northwest and is helping define how the pest management industry should approach the growing green movement.

Jerry Batzner, president, Batzner Pest Management, said Marlowe is a low-key but highly intelligent business leader.

“He’s very motivated in his company and for things to happen, but he’s not one who gets up on a soapbox,” Batzner said. “He’s looking at the business from a higher level. I think Jack understands numbers and the mechanics and the matrix really well.”

Batzner said Marlowe also is open to change and willing to try new things. “He knows how to let his hair down, the little bit he’s blessed with at this point in his life,” Batzner said, laughing. “He’s there to help you.”

Garry Tank, president of Buffalo Exterminating, said Marlowe works hard to promote and improve his business and the pest management industry, but doesn’t shout it to the world.

“He’s definitely under the radar. He’s good at what he does,” Tank said. “He’s very serious about it, but doesn’t come off as very serious about it.”

COMING TO THE INDUSTRY. Marlowe was born in Blythe, Calif., and grew up in the San Francisco area, and graduated with a degree in biology from San Jose State University. After graduation, he traveled east toward the University of Montana, where he had been accepted into a graduate program for forestry.

But on the way to grad school, he stopped off in a town near Coeur D’Alene, Idaho. It’s a beautiful area, Northern Idaho, and it had a few resorts with good water skiing, so Marlowe took a semester off and found a job at one of the resorts. The semester turned into a year, during which time another resort closed and Marlowe and a partner decided to buy it. They spent a few years working there, trying to make ends meet, but the economy was just too tight. Plus, Marlowe and his wife, Suzie, had their first baby, Jen.

So he went to work as an operations manager with his brother’s Redi National franchise. The two brothers worked at the regional company together for a few years, and in 1989, Jack set out on his own, buying his own Redi National franchise and taking advantage of the region’s growing population, thanks to expanding companies like Boeing and Microsoft. He operated that franchise until 1995, when he decided to pursue a more IPM-focused approach to pest management. He worked out a deal with Redi National, paid off the rest of his fees and changed the company’s name to Eden Advanced Pest Technologies.  

Marlowe said he came into the business at age 29 with the intention of only staying a few years, making some money, and then moving on to other things. That was 20 years ago.

“Originally I enjoyed the science of it. I like the business strategy, too. I like the business model. You’re doing things nobody else wants to do, or can’t do, so you can think about different strategy,” he said.

Now, Eden has 56 employees and branches in Seattle, Portland, Olympia and southern Oregon. Suzie works as the company’s chief financial officer, and Jen, now 23, is marketing director. Jack’s sister Cheryl Benevich is a former office manager and works in the call center. His other daughter, Grace, works in the accounting department, and his son, Justin, helps out in the summers.

“I think that my ecology background was part of it. The science part of me was very interested in pest management, not just as a business, but as a science,” Marlowe said. “Integrated Pest Management was very interesting to me because it’s a thing where you can sit down with three different groups and achieve a win-win-win.

“Three people can sit down, and we can, through the decision making process of Integrated Pest Management, all, if we choose to, agree.”

GREEN PEST MANAGEMENT. The Pacific Northwest has long been known as an area where people focus more on the environment and the impact of things like pest control. Marlowe has embraced similar ideas and successfully implemented them at Eden.

And Marlowe had the chance to implement his green approach in a big way: He landed the account for the Microsoft campus in Redmond, Wash. The company had strict requirements for its pest management plan: no pesticides allowed inside, very limited pesticides allowed outside, zero tolerance for pests, and they wanted Eden to lower its cost per square foot each year.

“We did that. It caused us to be innovative and made us take chances and risks,” Marlowe said. “It was a big task, so we just kind of bellied up to it and it made us better. I’ve had good people that help me go from, ‘This is a good idea,’ to actually, ‘We can make this work.’”

Eden’s ability to successfully implement IPM strategies led the company to work extensively with school districts in Washington and Oregon. Marlowe said working with school officials allowed him to see the business from their side, and improve the way he communicated Eden’s goals to them.

“You get exposed to some ideologies. You get kind of a feel for what works and what doesn’t work,” he said. “I became better at the political aspect of IPM. How do you take a school and set up something that’s not to confusing for them that enables a program to be successful? It’s a lot of education. You can’t just do it in a vacuum.”

Marlowe also makes a point of educating his employees about the importance of IPM, and how to do it. He created special toolboxes, filled with things like caulk, wire mesh and monitoring devices, for each of his technicians, so they would have the right tools ready for IPM jobs. He said the tools and hands-on training ultimately meant more to their success than classroom-style training.

“A lot of times I see that. You talk it, but you have to go in and actually buy the stuff and get them the tools in their hands,” Marlowe said. “They really can’t do it if they don’t have the tools. You can’t just do class work.”

A FAMILY INDUSTRY. Marlowe said he has always loved the way the pest management industry feels like a big family. When he was still new to the business, Marlowe attended a conference, and former NPMA President Judy Dold came right up to a group he was with and gave everybody hugs. “That’s one of the cool things about this industry,” he said. Marlowe also belongs to Associated Pest Services, an alliance of regional pest control firms, and said he wanted to bring the same sense of family to the annual Pacific Northwest Pest Management Conference out his way.

“I wanted to bring that same kind of love and camaraderie and this wealth of knowledge,” he said. So, he asked some of his friends and colleagues like Mike Rottler, Chuck Tindol, Raleigh Jenkins, Herb Field, Kevin Kordek and Jeff Springer to come out west and speak to business owners in his region.

“I just took a shot,” he said. And it worked. “They’re still really humble. They’re still in the process of (building their businesses). It’s still real with them. We do kind of an unplugged version the next day. The play between the speakers is way cool, too.”

But Marlowe doesn’t tout his own achievements without some prodding. He said he still works hard, 20 years later, to learn from other people in the industry.

“Right now, I’m not doing the talking; I’m still doing the listening,” he said. “I see people that do it the other way: They should probably listen a little more and speak a little less. I try to rein myself in. So much of it is a waste of time. You’re in a meeting, and you could say your piece, but somebody (else) just did.”

But he is still learning, and having a great time. Twenty years ago, he came into the business as a way to make some money, but he found friends, and a family, along the way.

“Now, what’s keeping me in it is my family — family and friends. There are people that I’m in that mode now … I don’t know that I have many friends that aren’t in the industry. It’s a cool business.”

Jack Marlowe at a Glance

• President, Eden Advanced Pest Technologies
• Formerly served as operations manager at Redi National
• At age 23, he and a business partner owned Sedlmeyer resort in Northern Idaho
• Bachelor’s degree in biology, San Jose State University
• Wife, Suzie; daughters Jen, 23, and Grace, 20; son, Justin, 18
• Hobbies include water skiing and snow skiing
• Developed an IPM program, Natural Choice, that is recognized by Green Shield Certified IPM Program called Natural Choice

A Resort Life

Marlowe is an avid water skier, and says it’s a great way to motivate himself to stay in shape. “It’s a rush,” he said of speeding along behind the boat, weaving through buoys. “I’m probably doing 60 or so. On one ski.”

He’s pursued the sport since he was in his 20s. After he graduated from college, he went east and eventually bought an Idaho resort with a partner.

It was tough to make ends meet, but Marlowe said he had a good time while he was there. He would spend the mornings water skiing, then cook for the guests and then stay up late coordinating entertainment.

“It was a fun thing to do while you’re young. It was a pretty good life, but you just couldn’t make any money,” he said. “You had two months in the year to make all your money.

“Our end was good. It was a kicking resort, man. We had rock and roll on the weekends,” he said. But he’d shut the concerts down at 2 a.m., and have to be back in the kitchen by 6:30 to cook breakfast. “It was brutal. It was a brutal schedule.”