🠈  Orkin  🠊

Orkin is a nationwide chain offering pest control and pest extermination services.

The company began when Otto Orkin, a fourteen-year-old son of immigrants from Latvia, borrowed fifty cents to buy arsenic to create the best formula for ridding his parent's store and local farms of rats.

"Orkin the Rat Man" continued to expand his extermination services in surrounding town and along the railways. Orkin moved his business to Richmond, Va in 1909 where there was little competition then to Atlanta, Georgia in 1926.

The extermination industry did relatively well during the Depression. A well orchestrated publicity campaign convinced the world that pest control was an essential service allowing Orkin to avoid the worst of rationing during WWII. With a generous profit sharing program, Orkin had grown to 141 branches in 20 states by 1950.

In fighting among Orkin's heirs led to the selling of the firm to Rollins Broadcasting, also headquartered in Atlanta, in 1964. Rolins also purchased Western Pest Control and International Fumigation. Rolins trades on the NYSE with they symbol ROL).

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