Arrow Exterminators Brand Guidelines: The Thomas Family’s Atlanta Firm Since 1964

An Atlanta family business, now in its third generation.

Arrow Exterminators was founded in Atlanta in 1964 by Starkey and Imogene Thomas, the company says, and it describes itself as family-owned and operated ever since; its About page says the company remains committed to what the Thomases set out to build when they began more than 60 years ago. The founding year and city also appear in a March 2026 press release published by the Atlanta Braves, in which the company’s chief executive said Arrow had “proudly called Atlanta home since 1964.”

The family line runs through Joe Thomas, the company’s owner and chairman of the board. In November 2026 Arrow announced the Joe Thomas Endowed Professorship at the University of Tennessee, from which he graduated, saying he had devoted 54 years of his career to the company. His daughter, Emily Thomas Kendrick, is chief executive, and the company calls her leadership the third generation of the Arrow legacy.

Kendrick’s standing in the trade rose in October 2025, when she was named president of the National Pest Management Association at its PestWorld conference in Orlando, according to the company. At the same event two of her colleagues were honoured: Alyson Gilleland, vice president of Arrow University, received the association’s Women of Excellence Award, and Marie Horner, vice president of government affairs, received the Crown Leadership Award given by Pest Control Technology magazine, the company said. Daily operations sit with Tim Pollard, president and chief operating officer, who is quoted in the April 2026 announcement of the company’s 199th and 200th service centres, in Cleveland, Tennessee, and Lafayette, Louisiana; the first was its fourteenth office in Tennessee and the second its fourth in Louisiana.

The Braves release of March 2026 gave 198 service centres, more than 3,600 team members and a fleet of more than 3,600 vehicles, serving customers in sixteen states from Alabama and Arizona to Texas and Virginia. The company’s About page now gives over 200 service centres in 16 states. Arrow describes itself as the largest family-owned pest and termite control company in the United States, and its press boilerplate adds that the ranking is by revenue; that is the company’s own claim.

Pest, termite, home and lawn — under one slogan.

Arrow presents itself as a full-service company for homes and businesses. Its named service groups are pest control, covering household pests, mosquitoes, fire ants and wildlife; termite control; home services such as handyman work, insulation and moisture control; and lawn services, from aeration to palm-tree and shrub care. It also lists new-construction treatments and the documentation needed in real-estate transactions.

Its environmental programme has its own name and registered mark: STEPS, short for “Sustainability Through Environmental Practices and Solutions,” which the company sells as a named system across its services. The company describes it in three stages, inspect, strategise and treat, and calls it the industry’s first environmental responsibility programme; that claim is Arrow’s own. It says it holds GreenPro certification from the Foundation for Professional Pest Management and the National Pest Management Association, and QualityPro certification from the association.

Growth has come partly through acquisition, and the company has built a brand structure around it. Its “Family of Brands” page says it has welcomed respected local companies and invested in them “rather than replacing what makes them special,” so that acquired brands operate locally under shared core values and standards. Its mergers page says it has completed more than 100 mergers and offers a job to every team member who joins through one; a testimonial there comes from the former owner of Nader’s Pest Control, who sold his family firm to Arrow in 2010. Training runs through Arrow University, which the company describes as field, classroom and online instruction for employees at every level.

The line that runs through its pages is “Beyond the Call,” used as a promise to customers on the home page and in the company’s description of itself.

How the category presents itself.

A pest-control brand is mostly met in working places rather than in shops: on the side of a service van, on a technician’s shirt, on a branch sign, on a service agreement and on an invoice. When Rentokil Initial bought Western Exterminator in 2012, the seller’s president told the Orange County Register that customers would “still see our trucks” and the same people at the door. The companies themselves publish these vehicles, uniforms and branch pages as the public face of the business, so a guide to the category starts there.

Some of the older American firms lean on a character or a family name. Western Exterminator’s little man with a big hammer has been in use long enough to be parodied on The Simpsons in 1995, according to English Wikipedia, while Ehrlich still carries the surname of the man who started it in Reading in 1928.

Service plans are the other naming layer. A company that sells recurring visits gives its plans names, and those names sit beside the company name on websites, quotes and contracts; they have to read clearly in small type and stay consistent with the main mark. This guide looks at names, marks and colour as the companies present them, and does not reproduce any logo, livery or uniform.

Behind many local names sits a larger owner. Rentokil Initial’s 2012 annual report lists Ehrlich, Presto-X and Western as “country-specific” brands under one shared brand essence, and its 2025 report describes keeping 30 pest brands, national, regional and local, in North America. Corporate pages on owners, acquisitions and branch networks are therefore part of how these brands present themselves, and each guide notes who owns the name today.

A left-field wall, a radio segment and a stadium in Athens.

Arrow’s most visible branding is in sport. Its partnership with the Atlanta Braves began in 2013, and in March 2026 the two announced an extension running through the 2036 season, the Braves release said. At Truist Park the company has a static Arrow graphic on the left-field wall and a rotating graphic behind home plate, and it presents the “Call to the Bullpen” segment on the Braves Radio Network, which the release said has 166 affiliates across 100 markets in ten states; it is also the official pest-control provider of The Battery Atlanta. In 2025 Arrow named the Braves its sports partner of the year.

In October 2025 the company added the University of Georgia, becoming the official pest-control provider of the Georgia Bulldogs, with pest-control service for the university’s athletics facilities, Arrow signage inside Sanford Stadium and further visibility at baseball and gymnastics events, according to its announcement. The university’s director of athletics welcomed the company as a new partner with strong local roots. Kendrick linked the deal to Arrow being founded and headquartered in Georgia.

For a design guide, Arrow Exterminators shows how one name and one slogan can sit over a growing group of acquired local brands, with ballpark signage as a recurring public setting. Compare Orkin, another long-established American pest-control name, and Massey Services, another family-owned company in the South-east. For this guide we use brick red, charcoal and an ink blue with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Arrow Exterminators’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.