Having grown up alongside his father on southwest Missouri job sites, Larry Snyder was a contractor first, but his work as a salesman was always close behind.
He started Larry Snyder and Co. in 1978, merging his skills after graduating with a marketing degree from Missouri Southern State University.
“He talks about being the first contractor who could actually sell construction, and he was really good at it,” says Bob Keller, Snyder and Co.’s president and a 23-year employee. “He always had this uncanny ability to sit down with an owner and go through the [construction] process and sell him what he needed – and only what he needed. He became very successful in that.”
Snyder no longer fills a day-to-day role in the business and instead spends his time on community involvement, namely with Ozarks Technical Community College, where he began a second six-year term on the board of trustees in April.
Keller, Vice President Dusty Emmert and a team of some 25 others in field management, estimating and accounting orchestrate the work from the company’s Ozark headquarters, 4820 N. Towne Centre Drive.
The general contractor, which works in Missouri, Oklahoma, Kansas and Arkansas, prides itself in the diversity of structures it builds.
Its portfolio includes multifamily and state tax credit-funded housing, resorts hotels, retail, manufacturers, churches and schools. “We haven’t really had one industry that we focused on,” says Lacy Emmert, who handles several roles including corporate secretary and information technology tasks.
With 16 contracts currently in hand – including the Jeffries Elementary School expansion, Springfield’s compressed natural gas fueling station and five Missouri State University campus jobs this summer – the firm is on pace to exceed the roughly 23 projects completed last year.
In this post-recession construction environment, Larry Snyder and Co. has been averaging 1.5 projects in progress each month, Dusty Emmert says.
To combat the bearish development market in recent years, Snyder and Co. restructured by closing a division, laying off 15 staff members and investing in the estimating and accounting departments.
“We put every department under the microscope because of the economic downturn to see how we could improve,” Keller says. “We also looked at what we could do better to service our clients and understand their businesses and needs. That was key going forward and helped us get through a lot of tough times in the last four years.”
In the estimating department, Josh Stringer was named lead, a couple of personnel were added, and upgrades were made to the estimating and preconstruction management software systems.
“We tightened our belts everywhere we could,” Keller adds. “And we started growing again. Last year, we had a very favorable year, and it’s because of our employees. Our employees are basically what got us through the worst part of it. We’re still not out of it, but it’s looking a little bit better.”
Though 2010 was not a profitable year, the company bounced back into the black in 2011, with revenues of $28.3 million and 202 percent profit growth.
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