A Busy Year of Raising the Industry's Profile to the Public for PPMA

HONOLULU - At the Professional Pest Management Alliance (PPMA) Board of Directors meeting, PPMA Executive Director Jim Fredericks provided updates on the organization’s work and reminisced on his first day on the job at NPMA in 2010 — which happened to be at PestWorld in Honolulu. 

“My NPMA anniversary is here,” he said. “I never reported to headquarters; they told me to come here. I figured, how can I lose? That was 13 years ago.”

PPMA is focused on growing its membership and brainstorming new ways to attract more industry members into the fold, Fredericks said. The organization has increased its investors from about 240 to 280 this year, he said, and it recently rolled out new supplier investor levels. 

“There are 200 exhibitors over there in the exhibit hall,” Fredericks said. “How can we get all those folks involved and invested in the growth of the industry?”

PPMA Chair Bobby Jenkins echoed this, saying, “We need to be growing our impact out there in the public and doing the great work that PPMA does. I always say, when you look at the work that PPMA does, the only thing that can be better is to do more of what we’re doing. I mean, the formula is fantastic, but the chance to do more and to go from $2.5 million to $3 million to $5 million to $10 million — I still have that vision. I think we can do that. … There’s 20,000 companies out there. How do we pull the industry into what we do? Because I think we all know that every time a PPMA ad is run or a story is done … everybody’s business in the industry benefits.”

PPMA is also thinking about new ways it can deliver existing resources to investors, Fredericks said, such as Mainframe, the organization’s online subscription service that provides marketing materials to pest control companies. PPMA is planning a redesign of Mainframe that will allow investors to subscribe more easily, he said. 

“The new, redesigned Mainframe will be able to interact with the NPMA database that is so strong,” he added.  

Fredericks also reviewed organizational highlights over the last several months, including a redesign of pestworld.org, which is scheduled to launch in November. The revamped website features an overhaul of its insect identification and “find a professional” zip code locater pages, among other updates, said Fredericks.