Andy Buyting has been in the retail industry since he was six years old.

Today, he applies his entrepreneurial know-how to Green Village Home & Garden, one of Canada's most successful specialty garden stores. Green Village Home & Garden is currently expanding into multiple locations throughout eastern Canada, and is scheduled to start selling franchises in Canada in 2009.

Andy is a graduate of the University of New Brunswick's Business Administration program and Birthing Of Giants, a three-year course on entrepreneurship at MIT sponsored by the Entrepreneurs' Organization in conjunction with Inc. Magazine and the MIT Enterprise Forum. Andy is currently enrolled in the prestigious Gathering Of Titans program at MIT, a continuation of Birthing Of Giants limited to only a select group of graduates.

He has been a member of the Entrepreneurs' Organization, Toronto Chapter, since 1999. Andy is the recipient of several awards including the Business Development Bank of Canada's Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award for New Brunswick in 2000; Entrepreneur of the Year Award for the Fredericton Chamber of Commerce Business Excellence Awards in 2001; the prestigious Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award for Atlantic Canada in 2001 (finalist); and, most recently, winner of the 2008 Next Generation Indie Book Awards and the Bronze Medal Winner of the Axiom Book Awards.

He lives in New Brunswick with his wife, Paula, and their daughter, Leah.

"The Retailer's Roadmap to Success provides great insight into the secrets of specialty retail. Andy's grasp of the subject and concise approach provides the independent, specialty retailer with an invaluable tool and more than a few entrepreneurial ideas."
-Annette Verschuren, president, The Home Depot Canada & Asia