Veseris CEO Connects to Family Roots in New Role

AUSTIN, Texas — In November, Veseris named Ken Bradley as its new CEO. For Bradley, the decision to lead the Veseris team was both practical and personal.

“I was with my prior employer [Allied Electronics & Automation] for 18 years, so I'm not exactly a person that jumps around too much,” said Bradley. “I wasn't looking to move at all, and I was really happy. We were growing by leaps and bounds. We'd gone through transformation, and I had built a fantastic leadership team. But sometimes when things come knocking, when you give it your ear and listen, it can be compelling. And I think that's what I found here [at Veseris].”

When a headhunter came knocking for the Veseris position, Bradley declined at first. But when they reached out a second time, he listened to the company’s story.

“My instincts kicked in, and what they were talking about as far as the needs of the company — the need to modernize some of its selling capabilities, to place more emphasis on digital and omni channel and connecting that effectively to the sales organization, which is very mature and well established within Veseris — those sorts of things resonated with me. Those are all things that I'd been doing at Allied, and so it made sense.”

But the decision to join Veseris felt more personal because of a family connection to the pest control industry.

“It's not the reason I chose it, but it certainly made it a bit more heartfelt,” Bradley said. “My dad worked in pest control for 25 years.”

The late Vernon Bradley started his pest control career working as a technician for Orkin and eventually founded his own company, Action Exterminators.

“My dad was very, very clear that this business is all about people,” Bradley recalled. “I went back to my time watching my dad and seeing how his customers revered him. They loved him, you know? There was that special bond that he had with them that's really important in this industry, because you don't often invite people in your home to do work. I think that's really unique to this industry, that personal touch. You can't lose it. So as you evolve the business, you might want to evolve with new toolsets and capabilities, but you have to continue to maintain and strengthen that personal element that keeps the customer coming back day after day after day, month after month, job after job.”

BACKGROUND. For the past 25 years of his career, Bradley, who received his bachelor’s degree from LeTourneau University in Longview, Texas, and his MBA from Texas Christian University in Forth Worth, Texas, has served in roles spanning commercial and operational disciplines. He considers an early sales job at Ryder Systems to be his entry point into this realm.

“That is where I got my connection to customers and understanding what it meant to really work at a relationship and build a partnership that could thrive,” he said.

At Allied Electronics & Automation, he started as a product manager and most recently served as the company’s president of the Americas.

“Allied is the place where I really got to stretch myself,” he said. “It was the culture that allowed me to do that. I was able to really expand my roles working across the full breadth of operational and commercial functions and expanding my general management knowledge.”

Bradley also served as the company’s senior vice president in the United Kingdom for two years. While there, he implemented strategies across multiple business disciplines and experienced business on a global scale.

When he returned to the U.S. in 2019, Bradley worked to accelerate Allied’s growth, taking it from a $600 million company to over $1 billion in three years.

“Our growth trajectory was the result of our embracing a stronger omnichannel approach,” he said. “It was a cultural transformation, as well. And then it was also about looking at synergistic offer extensions and inorganic opportunities that allowed us to accelerate further.”

NEW ROLE. As he begins his new role at Veseris, Bradley said he is ready to ensure “we do the best job in the industry of understanding our stakeholders needs and building out offers and propositions that allow us to become the leading advocate for customers and suppliers like.”

One of the biggest challenges Veseris — and the industry as a whole — faces is reaching younger generations who are “engaging in business in a very different way,” he said. He envisions Veseris being a differentiated player in the industry by offering digitized toolsets to its customers while still prioritizing relationships.

Other issues on Bradley’s radar include employee acquisition in an increasingly remote-oriented workplace and the increasing emphasis on sustainability and environmental requirements in the pest control industry.

Veseris has three major stakeholders, Bradley said: the customer, the supplier and the company’s people.

“There's this old adage that the customer's always right,” he said. “And I think there's a lot of truth to that. But the reality is, we have to be balanced between our commitment to our suppliers and to our customers. We have to represent our suppliers and give them the best vehicle to carry their products to market than anybody else. That's why they choose us. And if we can do that, they'll keep choosing us.”

Company culture comes into play for the third stakeholder.

“I firmly believe as a leader that culture wins the day, and your people are where you get the greatest value generation from,” Bradley said. “If you can really focus on your people as your first priority, the customers and suppliers tend to get taken care of very well.”