Best mates Daniel Allen and Edward Ross are two carpenters by trade who met on a Brisbane building site in 2014.
After Daniel tragically lost a close mate to suicide 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.
In 2018, the boys launched TradeMutt, a social enterprise workwear company by tradies for tradies. Their funky workwear was designed to take a more fun, light-hearted and colourful approach to normalising mental health conversations on a daily basis.
In June 2020, the pair launched TIACS, a free, early intervention mental health support service providing ongoing counselling services for the entire blue-collar sector. To date, TIACS has supported over 12,000 individuals at a return to the Australian community of $2 million in free services, receiving numerous national accolades.