Backyard tree-swing company in Jacksonville grows, with big boost up from Southern Living

After moving from Tanzania to Orange Park, Zac West looked around at the big Florida live oaks shading his property and thought: A tree swing would be perfect for his daughter Zara, whom he and his wife Hannah had adopted in Tanzania before she was a year old.

He built two, nothing fancy, but everyone seemed to enjoy them. A few years later, after adopting twin sons Josiah and Joshua, now 6, in America, the family moved to a 1940s house south of San Marco Square in Jacksonville with a big beautiful double lot and lots of trees.

And when the coronavirus pandemic hit and so much of the world shut down, West set up his tools outside under the trees, consulted YouTube videos, made a website of his own and began making swings — much fancier than before, with routed edges and holes and top-quality hand-spliced rope.

And on each one, he wood-burned the name of his new venture: Southern Pine Swing Co.

It seemed a good idea: He hadn't seen anyone selling tree swings and thought maybe there was a little market for them.

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It did not go well, at first. After a few months he had sold just two swings to close friends.

Then, a break. He sent a 42-inch double swing, a printout with his story and some family photos to Southern Living magazine, hoping to get in their Christmas edition. He soon heard back that it was too late.

But how about a feature story in the magazine?

West was ecstatic. The article ended up being three pages long, and orders started pouring in, a flood that kept the West family busy backlogged and busy for at least seven months, cranking out swing after swing.

A Southern Pine swing was then hung outside the Southern Living Idea House in Kentucky, which got him noticed by Keeneland Mercantile in Lexington, who gave his twin swing its Master of Craft award for homemade products.

It costs $165 for a pine swing, $30 more for cypress. A 42-inch twin swing is $240.

Is the company making money? he's asked.

West beamed a big smile: “A hundred percent. Definitely.”

Enough to do it full-time? He laughed: “A hundred percent no.”

Helping others across the world

West is 42, a native of Evansville, Ind. He works at KIPP Jacksonville Public Schools, a charter program for 2,900 students from the city's Northside and Westside, in marketing, fundraising and communications.

Before that he worked 15 years with Young Life, a worldwide Christian ministry for young people, including five years in Tanzania, where Hannah also worked for the group.

He says his religious faith is one of the driving factors for his backyard swing company which, by the way, has now upgraded to a tent in his yard where he aims to make 50 swings a month.

"From a young age I knew I wanted to live a life that would lead to other people’s lives being changed; it just so happened I found a wife who would also say the same thing, hence that led us to Africa together," he said.

He pays clients of Beyond 90, a Jacksonville nonprofit that helps refugees to the area, to braid the rope that holds up the swings. And for each tree sold, a dollar goes to a group called Fair Tree that's trying to reforest Tanzania. That's enough to plant two trees, he said.

“I definitely wouldn’t have a business if it was just impacting me. Just not interested," he said. "But if my life can be a conduit for transforming other lives, what else do we have?"

The business has begun cranking up as the holidays approach and orders from customers, drawn by nostalgia and the all-ages aspect of the swings, begin to get heavier.

Hannah pitches in to help on the swings, along with her father and a high school student they've hired. “It’s been fun," she said. "Fun, and a lot. On top of everything else.”

"Everything else" includes their 6-month-old daughter Gwen, whom they admit was a pleasant surprise after years of fertility treatments.

And it includes a recent trip to Africa with Zara, who's now 13. Zac and Hannah want her to know the place of her birth, so he made the long plane ride with her to Tanzania, their second return trip there together.

They were part of a group that, with the help of porters and guides, climbed to the top of Mount Kilimanjaro, more than 19,000 feet above sea level.

It was, he said, the hardest thing he's ever done, physically or mentally.

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West wants to see the swing company keep growing, enough so that his children could begin to work there in earnest as they grow, and enough so that it can continue to help people in Jacksonville and Tanzania.

West looks at it this way: "I’ve talked to folks who say, ‘Aw, I’ll get involved in nonprofits or make an impact when I retire.' But how do you know you’re going to be around when you retire? Why are you waiting?”

This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: Jacksonville's Southern Pine Swing Company helps refugees, Tanzania