Snider's Sales and Service
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Snider’s was long located at 421 11th
St.,
where many passersby stopped to admire
the bicycles on display in the
shop’s front windows.
The Herald-Dispatch file photo
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Snider’s Sales and Service
has been in business for more than
100 years and has seen some big changes over the years.
The business was established by O.J. Snider, who was
first a baker, next a restaurateur, then an ice cream
manufacturer. Snider was an enthusiastic
bicyclist and in 1908 started a shop
where he sold and repaired bicycles.
When he died in 1926 his son, George
R. Snider, took over the business
and added locksmithing
to its services.
Locksmithing long has been
associated in the
popular mind with mystery and romance. But,
as George Snider told the Huntington
Advertiser in a 1946 newspaper interview,
he found nothing mysterious or romantic
about being a locksmith. “It’s simply a
trade for a skilled mechanic,” he said.
Snider’s was long located
at 421 11th St,
where many passersby stopped to
admire the bicycles on display
in the shop’s front windows.
In the late 1940s, Snider
moved his shop to a new
location at 1136 4th Ave. Then, in the late 1970s,
he sold the firm to local businessman
Jeffrey E. Hood.
Born in Huntington, Hood
earned a Bachelor of
Business Administration degree at the University
of Mississippi,then returned home to embark
on decades of participation in the
local business community.
He was the founder of Hood
Realty and Hood Enterprises
and retired as Cabell County Circuit Clerk. Hood
moved the Snider’s shop to a new address
at 238 4th Ave. He died in 2022.
Today, Snider’s is still
owned and operated by the Hood family.
As an authorized Stihl dealer, it sells walk and riding
lawnmowers, chainsaws, edgers, hedge trimmers
and brush cutters, pole pruners, pressure
washers and lots of other things.
It even sells protective
and work wear. If founder O.J. Snider
and his son George returned and looked around at today’s
Snider’s, they wouldn’t recognize the place. There’s
nary a bicycle in sight and the business hasn’t
done locksmithing in years.
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Note: This Article and picture appeared in the Herald-Dispatch Newspaper on April 1, 2025.
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