Zach Snyder: Flooring Isn’t Boring

“At the age of 13, when my family moved to West Milton, I started helping my dad install flooring, on weekends and in the summer. Dad was an electrician, but he installed flooring on the side to earn extra money. If you wanted something, my dad would say, ‘You’re just going to have to figure it out.’ At my house, nothing was free.”

That was Zach Snyder, who now owns his own business, Zach Snyder Flooring and Design, LTD., in downtown Tipp City. He recently bought the Sugden building (which he sometimes calls the Sampson building, for the original owner), right across Main Street from his office in the Spencer building. The Sugden building, “his dream come true,” has a very large basement/lower level, about 9,000 sq. ft., which Zach is using to store flooring material, and the street level might eventually become his flooring showroom and office, when the Sugdens are through using it. “We’re going to keep growing,” Zach says, and then kiddingly, “One day it’ll be ‘Zach’s Super Store.’”

But Zach’s journey to Tipp City and business ownership has been a long one.

After moving from Illinois to West Milton, Zach went to West Milton High School for two years and then to the Miami Valley CTC for two years. He went to Columbus for a while in the T-shirt printing business as an account manager, but the business went down in 2009, and he lost that job. So, he went back to installing flooring, for about a year and a half, and during that time he met his future wife Miranda, whom he later married at the Tipp City Roller Mill. But he realized he didn’t want to be a floor installer, long term. Then two days after he was married, he saw a flooring salesman job advertised by Flooring America, a large flooring company in Beavercreek. 

So, he excitedly sent in his resume, put on his (only) suit the next day (dug out of his grandma’s basement) and waited in the store’s parking lot until it opened, walked into showroom and said to the manager, “I’m here for the job.” The manager took his resume and said, “We’re still interviewing, you’ll have to come back.” Zach pulled up a chair and sat down, and said, “No, I’m serious. I’m here for the job.” And he and the manager sat down and talked for a while, and Zack talked himself into his first salesman’s position, at which he excelled.

Zach then worked as a salesman at Flooring America for four years and then to another established flooring company Tipp City for eight years. He eventually got bored, and realized he liked what he was doing, but wanted to do it for himself. So, he talked to his dad, who said he would help. And Zach thought, “If my dad will help me, I can make it!” Zach says, “It’s important to me to have happy customers, because in Tipp City, they’re all around me. They come in and I give them a hug. Now how many people give their flooring guy a hug? Selling quality goods to quality people is really my market.”

Zach says, “Now, everything has completely changed. Flooring has changed into a fashion industry, gone from brown carpet and sheet vinyl to so many options. Now it’s a fashionable thing. And you can buy the stuff (flooring) anywhere, but it’s the service you give with it and the knowledge of picking the right product. The service is what counts. I’ve worked with the same five groups of guys (installers) for a long time. The quality of the work, you can see it. It’s a funny thing about flooring, it’s not technically a skilled trade, but it requires immense knowledge and skills. But you can’t go to school to learn about it. Can’t go to the CTC to learn about flooring. You have to rely on experience.”

Zach notes that his whole family is here. His older son is a senior at Tipp HS and his younger son is just starting kindergarten. He says, “I love my job, it gives me purpose. It’s the American dream I’m living right now.”