Chucking out cedar products: young entrepreneur's year-old business growing rapidly.

• Author: Stewart, Nick
• Position: TIMMINS

Alight rain falls on the storage yard at Woodchuckers Manufacturing, settling into the countless logs scattered throughout the property and evoking the distinctive aroma of cedar, which hangs heavy in the air.

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Meanwhile, Gibson, a golden retriever and the company's mascot, gleefully bounds through waist-high piles of sawdust and disappears, his fur matching the hue of the wood shavings.

Three nearby workers, accustomed to the sights and smells, ignore the scene and continue cutting the cedar logs into planks of various lengths. Soon, these will either be used in the company's custom cedar products such as saunas, hot tubs and lawn furniture, or sold directly to local customers pursuing do-it-yourself renovation projects.

At the centre of it all is Kevin Mulligan, the 29-year-old owner of Woodchuckers who often spends 10 to 12 hours a day preparing wood, assembling furniture, and making sure his personally-designed products are shipped on time.

"Value-added really is the word of the day," he says. "Cedar is an underutilized wood, it's beautiful and naturally weather-resistant, which it makes it perfect for what it is we do here."

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Smack dab in the middle of a forest products manufacturing firm might seem an odd place for Mulligan, who graduated from the University of Windsor with a political science degree not three years ago. Even he admits it seems strange, though he was only too happy to return to a passion for woodworking which he first developed in high school, having built some lawn furniture for his parents. Other friends and family began asking him for pieces of their own, and Mulligan soon found enough orders to put himself through university, working primarily in the summer time.

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"It was so popular that I was getting calls for orders throughout the year," he says.

After graduating from university, Mulligan decided to pursue his lucrative hobby as a full-time business, and moved back to his hometown of Timmins.

In 2006, Mulligan put in a bid for the Ministry of Natural Resource's cedar allocation, which instead went to Chapleau's Cree-Tech and the new Hardy Cedar Lumber facility in Smooth Rock Falls.

Despite failing to secure the allocation, he nevertheless pressed on, securing a supply deal with a local company, as well as funding from the Northern Ontario Heritage Fund and Canadian Youth Business...