By: Rachel Pillow
With summer in full swing many of us take advantage of the weather by hosting backyard BBQs and pool parties. But, with the onset of summer, comes the onset of annoying pests: mosquitoes, roaches, fleas, spiders, ants and more. These unwanted guests especially love the humid, Georgia air and our lush, green yards. Worse still, some of them like to find refuge inside our homes.
With the help of Do- It-Yourself Pest Control, headquartered in Suwanee, Georgia, it is possible to enjoy being outside without being eaten alive, and it is possible to overcome the trail of ants that are marching through your back door, or the bedbugs that have found their way to your mattress.
Do-It-Yourself Pest Control has been family-owned and operated for nearly 35 years. Owner, Walt Cline, and his father founded the company in 1982 and soon thereafter brought on his sister and Managing Partner, Cindi Lord. Both Walt and Cindi still run the company today and recently hired even more family members: Walt’s son, Fletcher, and daughter, Scotti. Walt’s wife, Sherri, who is a retired Gwinnett educator, also comes into the office on a regular basis. “She’s the office mom. She takes care of everyone and keeps me in line,” he joked.
Do It Yourself Pest Control has 22 employees and 4 locations, including a retail store in Chamblee, Georgia and a warehouse in Arizona. The Suwanee retail shop opened in December of 2015. Primarily an e-commerce site before then, the brick and mortar addition has proved beneficial in the Suwanee community. Customers now have the opportunity to speak with pest control experts face-to-face and gain hands-on knowledge about the products. Online sales are still the hub of the company though. In 1996, they were one of the first to get online with retail pest control. Today, they ship thousands of products all across the US. Their website also serves as one of the top resources on the web for industry information and answers to questions such as, “How to get rid of fleas?” The resources pages and blog articles are not merely used as a platform to push products, but are a way for Do It Yourself Pest Control to offer advice that purely benefits the general public…such as, “Remove all standing water in your yard to help get rid of mosquitos.”
Clients range from exterminators to landscapes to homeowners looking for affordable, easy-to-use pest control solutions. “We’ve found that a lot of homeowners want to do this themselves because they trust themselves and are invested in the care of their own home,” said Fletcher. For people that don’t know where to begin, they offer a variety of “starter kits” that include step-by-step instructions and very user-friendly products. The professional grade solutions you will find at Do It Yourself Pest Control rival that of any licensed, contracted exterminator and are leaps and bounds above the quality found in a big box retail store.
“We don’t push products that we don’t truly think people need,” said Walt. “People are generally pretty unhappy when they have a pest problem, so we do our best to make them feel better about the situation and reassure them that it can be fixed,” he continued. With seven technicians available at anytime, including one Spanish-speaking technician, they offer full-time support to help walk through any pest problem their customers are trying to tackle. “At the end of the day our customers are very gracious and it’s a pleasure to help them: that is probably my favorite thing about being in this business,” said Walt. And at 60 years old he has no plans to slow down anytime soon. If anything, the business is growing faster now than it ever has, and he wants to keep that momentum going…and keep it in the family of course.
