A young entrepreneur is making waves across the country after growing his business by a factor of seven in just a few years.

Tyler Dueck, Co-owner of RONA Valley Enterprises in Rosenort, won the Best Young Retailer award at the Outstanding Retailer Awards Gala earlier this month.

Dueck began working at RONA in 2007 before purchasing the branch in 2015. At 34, he notes the judges were impressed with the young leadership staff and the rapid growth.

Even as a teenager, Dueck says he was in love with the family business his uncle started, but soon began seeing untapped potential to grow the store. While the business shipped trusses from coast to coast, when Dueck took over he immediately went to work offering customers a full slate of products.

"Rather than sending a truss that takes up twenty percent of a semi truck, we're squaring off that entire semi with everything we can possibly fit," Dueck explains. "It's not that much tougher to sell them on the other 25 products they need to finish the building."

Dueck notes the team is also active in the community with annual BBQs and donations to local causes.

They have shipped supplies for entire buildings to Newfoundland, Mexico and Alaska. For a lumber yard located in a small town, attracting customers across North America has been key, he says.

"You can't get comfortable just relying on your local customers," Dueck says. "There are a lot of people who aren't necessarily being serviced by a lumber yard. You get into other provinces and there's pretty big gaps between towns and cities and we find a lot of those people."

Last year, Dueck notes they shipped a $70,000 shop to a customer in between four cities, "but he was overlooked by all of them."

He notes the team is also active in the community with annual BBQs and donations to local causes. The store helped raise $10,000 in memory of employee Cal Dueck. The store also contributed $35,000 to the Rosenort Firehall.