Wee Waa was showered with love last week when TradeMutt and TIACS founders Dan Allen and Ed Ross came to town in their funky shirts for a Small Business luncheon at the House on Rose.
It was a picture-perfect day with the sun shining and roads to Wee Waa open after floodwaters started to recede, giving the district’s community a great opportunity to celebrate and enjoy each other’s company after isolation.
“Thanks so much for welcoming us to the gorgeous town of Wee Waa, we’ll certainly be back,” said Dan.
The Narrabri Shire Council event was held in collaboration with the Wee Waa Chamber of Commerce, and more than 70 people attended enjoying a delicious lunch and an engaging speech from Dan Allen and Ed Ross.
TradeMutt is a social impact workwear brand, by tradies for tradies and its signature funky and eye-catching shirts are designed to start conversations about mental health especially within the rural and blue-collar sectors, helping to make ‘an invisible issue impossible to ignore’.
Best mates Dan and Ed are two carpenters by trade who met on a Brisbane building site in 2014.
After Dan tragically lost a close mate in 2015, the two tradies identified two glaring problems – the tone of the mental health conversation was too serious and ordinary Australians don’t know where to go to first seek support.
“We thought this is a space that really needs to be shaken up and we already had the idea for workwear, and we thought why can’t we tie these two ideas together … and then TradeMutt was born,” Ed told the Wee Waa crowd.
In 2018, Dan and Ed launched TradeMutt, and ever since their bright and colourful workwear has been starting more light-hearted and realistic discussions helping to normalise mental health conversations on a daily basis.
In June 2020, the pair started TIACS, an acronym for This Is A Conversation Starter. TIACS is a free, early intervention mental health support service providing ongoing counselling services, to date, it has supported more than 12,000 individuals.
As well as discussing their important mission to improve people’s health and wellbeing, Dan and Ed’s fun sense of humour also had the crowd in stitches at times: giving local ladies a kiss on demand while posing for photos, taking selfies and describing the high and lows of two tradies dipping their toes in the fashion world to start a business and the risk they ran with having lots of shirts leftover.
“Having 15,000 work shirts across the sizes of extra small to XXXL, so plenty of room for us to grow or shrink,” added Ed.
There was no cause for concern because TradeMutt and TIACS continue to be an amazing success story.
The dynamic duo spoke about people owning their own mental health as well as looking out for others, and gave attendees with some key messages about how it was better to establish a mental health plan when you are in a good frame of mind, rather than waiting to be unwell.
“Give TIACS a call and just chat to a counsellor and say ‘g’day’, for no reason at all – you won’t be taking the service away from anyone else.
“We’ve got a really good process, just book in, have a yarn and find out what it’s all about because if you find someone else struggling it’s far more powerful for you to be able to say, ‘You should call TIACS, I’ve actually called them and they’re really great, there’s good counsellors on the other end of the phone, you might really like it’.
“It really brings down those social barriers, and that’s our goal with TradeMutt and with TIACS is to remove the social barriers that have prevented people from accessing the kind of support they need.
“We want TIACS to be the service people use early, regularly and then go and tell their mates about.
“Thanks very much for having us here today guys, really appreciate it, and if anyone wants to have a yarn or has any questions, Ed and I are always up for a yarn.”
Chamber of commerce president John Clements said the feedback from the event was overwhelmingly positive.
“I think it was really good and it was a fantastic venue,” said Mr Clements.
Mr Clements said he felt for youth who in recent years had copped drought, COVID and isolation from floods but said it was great to see some of the district’s young workforce at the luncheon and for them to hear directly from the TradeMutt founders about what they can do if their mates are struggling and that it’s okay to make
contact and ask for help.
“Their talk was good, it really hit the mark.”
Mr Clements also praised those involved in organising the lunch and he hoped the chamber could host more breakfasts and lunches in the future with council’s support, focusing on areas such as childcare and the workforce.
“It was a great team of people who made it happen, especially Gillian Goddard, Sonia Fogarty and Janelle Schwager.”
TIACS Support Line 0488 846 988
Text at any time or call Mon-Fri | 8am-10pm AEST
For other enquiries please email [email protected] (not for clinical support)
If you or a loved one are in immediate danger or at risk of harm, please call 000.
For crisis support, call Lifeline on 13 11 14.
