SPOKANE – When Rod Schneidmiller started Sterling International 25 years ago, he told would-be customers that his Spokane company had created a safer way to trap and kill bugs, without insecticides.
Back then the standard reply he heard was, “Why shouldn’t I just spray them with poison? The only good bug is a dead bug.”
More often than not, they regarded Schneidmiller as odd for selling something that didn’t use carpet-bombing insecticide.
Recently, the Spokane Valley company celebrated its 25th anniversary. It survived, Schneidmiller said, because what was once considered odd is now widely seen as a safer, smarter and environmentally friendly way to eradicate pest insects.
“We were a little ahead of the curve,” he said. But, he added, “You don’t want to be too far ahead of the curve that people aren’t ready for what you have to offer.”
Its breakthrough product was a reusable yellowjacket trap, a yellow-green plastic cone about 10 inches tall that attracts the bugs inside but doesn’t let them out. Once the trap fills up, consumers take off the top, dump out the bugs and refill the cartridge with a chemical lure developed inside Sterling’s lab.
The yellowjacket trap has sold millions and has become as much as a backyard fixture as hibachis and garden hoses across North America and parts of Europe.
Not bad for a company that in 1982 began selling flytraps for about $4 apiece.
Today Sterling has annual revenues from $15 million to $20 million, according to outside analysts. Schneidmiller won’t discuss company sales figures for the company he and his wife, Georgette, own. The 60-worker company adds dozens of seasonal workers in the spring to handle production needed to ship products across the nation and overseas.
That heavy spring rush started earlier this year because of warm weather in the South. “We expected to shut down our second shift last week. But we’re still going with two shifts for as long as the demand continues,” Schneidmiller said.
The total U.S. market for bug removal or control continues to grow. U.S. sales during 2005 for all retail pest control products came to $2.5 billion. Much of that growth is occurring in warmer states and in fast-growing areas of the country, such as the Southwest, Florida and Texas.
Schneidmiller says he’s a private person not prone to discuss his company at length. “The reason this company was successful is the group of people who are here; they’ve made it happen,” he said. For years he declined to be interviewed by Spokane media and has agreed to talk because the company is marking its 25th anniversary.
During a recent tour of Sterling’s 110,000-square-foot building at the Spokane Industrial Park, Schneidmiller starts with a visit to the company’s director of research, Qing-He Zhang.
Zhang uses advanced technology that is attached to test-insect antennas and checks the electrical response to different chemicals. Because the goal is to attract insects, the chemicals Sterling use all occur naturally. They fall into groups that are either food or sex attractants, Zhang said.
“We’re a tech company, but you just can’t see it,” Schneidmiller said. The company holds several patents, both for the chemical formulations used inside the traps, known as attractants, and for the trap design.
Zhang spends most of his time helping Sterling prepare for its next probable insect targets – paper wasps and mosquitoes.
That work involves testing various naturally occurring substances and spending months hunting for the very specific chemical compounds that are most effective at attracting an insect species. Once the right combination is identified, Sterling finds a way to synthesize that natural compound in a form that can be stored and used easily inside the company’s traps.
Up to now, Sterling has relied on products that attract pests. The company is considering adding a line of repellents as well, Schneidmiller said.
Schneidmiller, who’s 51, got into this line of work after earning an agronomy degree from Washington State University. Having been raised on a grass seed farm in the Spokane Valley, he followed a hunch that money could be made developing less toxic traps for the area’s most common bugs.
He built his bug-trap prototypes in his garage. When he took them to area retailers, Schneidmiller tried to explain that sprays killed not just the flies or yellowjackets but many other bugs that played a role in maintaining healthy plant life.
In 1987, the company switched its brand name to RESCUE, which is the identifier most consumers remember when buying Sterling’s products.
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