MARK WANDY

Taiga Building Products

With a career spent exclusively in the Lumber and Building Industry, Mark Wandy is no stranger to hard work.

“I started pretty much from the ground up,” he said, “working on an assembly line at a roof and floor truss manufacturer in a small town in Saskatchewan.

From his experience on the assembly side, Mark moved on to become part of the design team, before heading to Regina and a position with Gang-Nail Truss. From there he tried his hand at the retail side of things at a lumber store before getting into purchasing—a position he held for the next five years. At that point in his career, the opportunities for a change of scenery and lifestyle beckoned Mark and his wife to make the move to Kelowna, BC, and through his already extensive network of industry contacts, he found himself a new home at Taiga, where he’s been ever since.

In response to receiving this award, Mark was “pleasantly surprised,” adding, “that for someone to take the time to do that, to nominate me, is a huge honour.”

Looking at the 2022 sales year, which led to Mark getting the award, he acknowledged that it was a very busy year. “The pandemic really turned our industry upside down,” he said, “Dealing with supply shortages, allocations and price increases. It was a challenging year, especially for my customers. It seemed like every call I made, something was delayed, or going up in price. It was a lot of one-to-one conversations.”

Mark credits his retail store background with giving him the skills he needed to navigate some of the more challenging conversations over the past year.

With 2023 just beginning, Mark is looking forward to a continuing trend of things getting back to normal, especially with regard to the stability of pricing and availability. In a year that may still be a bit of a reset from the pandemic, he’s particularly looking forward to getting to see more of his customers face-to-face again this year. “That’s

what this industry is built on.”

When asked what advice he would give to a younger version of himself or someone entering the industry, he said, “That’s hard to say because I started in this industry so young, and it led me to where I am today” and added, “If I were in a different industry I would have told myself that, ‘hey, this is such a great world to be a part of,’ and to get in sooner.”

Mark credits the relationships he’s made in the industry for helping him get to where he is today.