EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW: Nisus has acquired the selling, marketing and distribution rights to Sterifab
Noble Pine will continue to manufacture the product at its plant in Mount Vernon, New York, and Nisus will sell, market, distribute, and provide technical support to companies and distributors in the pest control industry.
Strivap is an antiseptic, insecticide and viralicide. Noble Pain says the product is widely recognized as an effective tool for pest management companies to control bed bugs, mites, fleas, lice, cockroaches, ants, spiders, and other pests. Sterifab was registered by the Environmental Protection Agency in 1967.
Sterifab is labeled for use on human-contact surfaces, including mattresses and upholstered furniture, which increases its flexibility. Noble Pine will continue to sell exclusively to and provide services to distributors in other industries in which Sterifab is used, such as janitorial, sanitation, bedding and furniture businesses.
© Noble Pine Products Inc
Nisus is a widely known company for sustainable products for the pest control, wood preservation and agricultural micronutrient industries. The company makes the products at its facility near the Great Smoky Mountains; Nisus will begin stocking and selling Sterifab to the pest control industry on May 1.
Barrett, president of Nisus, told me he was interested in working with Sterifab and Jordan Brooks, vice president of Noble Pine, before becoming president of the company in November 2021. But it wasn’t until December 2022 that the two began discussing the potential for a serious opportunity.
“At the time (before I became president of Nisus), I wasn’t in a position to talk to these guys. But he asked a colleague to tell Brooks that he was “interested,” Barrett said exclusively to the PCT. a couple of months ago, we’ve been talking on the phone and here we are,” Barrett said.
Barrett said Nisus plans to market Sterifab as a standalone product And As part of the extensive Nisus product range. Nisus has another bed bug product, Fireback, in its portfolio currently. Nisus also contains DSV (Disinfectant, Sterilizer, and Viruscid), which is a concentrated disinfectant, cleaner, fungicide, and disinfectant. The product kills a wide variety of viruses, bacteria and fungi on hard surfaces.
Brooks told PCT that he’s spoken with some Nisus employees and they’re excited to have a new product in their portfolio. “Someone is really pumped about the way Fireback supplements for bed bugs and bugs. They’re really excited about Sterifab being a non-residual substance that gets on the mattress and kills all levels of bed bugs,” he said. “They are really excited about how it can work as a two-punch with Fireback. It gives them another great product out there that they already have.”
Barrett added that adding the product to the Nisus lineup opens up new market opportunities for the company. “With Sterifab, we can start talking to customers that we haven’t had before. We will first put Sterifab on the map nationally and with one (sales team) efforts.”
Brooks told the PCT that this agreement would give Noble Pain the opportunity to sell it in additional parts of the country, areas they would not have had easy access to before this “partnership in practice” began.
© Effort
“I started in this business 15 months ago and didn’t really understand until a year ago how this industry relies on face-to-face interactions and meetings. I started accumulating frequent flyer miles (running) across the country to market it,” he said. “We rely on advertising, websites, IRs, travel to every show and visit pest control operators and pest management professionals on site but not to a degree that the Nisus guys do.”
Brooks said he had been like “a kid on Christmas morning” since his first phone call with Barrett.
“It seems everyone’s friends first and then worry about your business to some extent,” he said in a PCT statement. “I couldn’t believe this figure in the pest control industry wanted to talk to me about Sterifab.”
Barrett said Nisus isn’t “just trying to strike a deal on paper,” but the sales team stands behind the product itself with its knowledge of its application and use. Barrett said the new relationship with Brooks is like, “adding a piece of what we want and need in our business to be successful.”
“I’m adding someone who can help and have the opportunity to supervise,” he said. “It’s not just us,[Brooks]definitely wants to oversee this product and we’d love to hear what he has to say.”
Fourth generation success
Barrett told the PCT that both Nisus and Noble Pine are rooted in family history, which makes this relationship even more special.
Brooks is relatively new to the pest control industry, having only taken the reins as Vice President of Noble Pine just over a year ago when his uncle asked if he’d be willing to join the family business.
“My uncle’s grandfather founded the parent manufacturing company, and in 1967, my uncle’s father put Sterifab on the market and it was really created to be put on tapestries and upholstery,” Brooks said. In 1992, bed bugs were added to the poster, but it was almost an afterthought because bed bugs had basically been eradicated at that time, Brooks said.
“In the mid-2000s, you had an explosion of bed bugs,” he told the PCT. “We’re in New York and all of a sudden the Empire State Building and notable hotels are hit and the owners of these companies start talking to us. Sterifab was one of the very few products at the time that had bed bugs on the label.”
Previously, Brooks was a practicing attorney in Westchester County, New York, before joining the business. “The new challenge at 40 looked great,” he told the PCT.
Like many who have joined the pest management industry, Brooks has found PMPs to be very welcome. “The people I met were amazing,” he said. “Some people ask me if there’s anything I miss about the law, and there isn’t anything I miss about it. I haven’t yet found someone I don’t like or respect (in this industry). Then I’ll meet someone like Lee Barrett!”
Barrett already knows how amazing the industry is. “I wouldn’t be here if our sales team wasn’t doing what they’re doing. This addition to our portfolio will make things even sweeter.”
