You’ll know a TradeMutt shirt when you see it for a few reasons. The first one, and maybe the most unusual, is because This Is A Conversation Starter is embroidered across the back of just about every shirt in black and white.

(Our Undercover Mutter work shirts don’t have it for a more subtle TradeMutt experience.)

Okay, so, sure, these shirts are conversation starters. But, we reckon you’re asking:

Why are these shirts conversation starters?

TradeMutt shirts were first made to start conversations about mental health amongst tradies. They’re designed to make the invisible impossible to ignore and get blue collar Aussies talking about how they’re really doing.

TradeMutt started because one of our co-founders lost his best mate to suicide.

In 2015, TradeMutt co-founder Dan Allen lost his best mate to suicide. His apprentice, co-founder Ed Ross, was his support as he worked through the aftermath trying to process. They knew that they had to do something about the closed-off, conversation-less culture on work sites around the country. Sure, tradies were bantering but that’s not real conversation.

This Is A Conversation Starter.

So Dan and Ed started TradeMutt. The goal was simple:

Make funky, eye-catching workwear that starts conversations about mental health.

Together, they worked after-hours and weekend cash jobs to get the money together to place an initial order for 1,500 work shirts in the Coight, FAF, and MFG prints. It’s really hard to overstate here how much they didn’t know about workwear, fashion, or designing work shirts other than the experience they had wearing them as resi chippies.

Long story short: it worked.

Thanks to rigorous wear and tear tests (Ed wore and washed his very first polka dot TradeMutt shirt every single day for months) and a rock solid mission to start conversations, TradeMutt shirts were an instant hit.

The Channel 7 coverage above sold out of the initial run of TradeMutt shirts so Dan and Ed bought some more, started working on new designs, and began building a business that would leave a lasting impact rather than just a flash in the pan.

Six years later, we’re still going strong.

Fast forward to today and Mutters have been wearing TradeMutt shirts and starting conversations for over six years now. The conversations that have been started with TradeMutt shirts have made an immeasurable impact to Aussie blue collar workers.

50% of our profits are donated directly to TIACS.

Since 2018, we’ve supported over 4,650 tradies, truckies, rural, and blue collar workers with conversations through TIACS. That’s nearly 5,000 tradies that who haven’t had to pay for professional mental health support through a text or call service that’s available for you when you need it.

We’ve heard story after story of legends who just had a chat to someone wearing a TradeMutt shirt with transparency and honesty and turning their lives around. Sometimes they talk to TIACS, sometimes they just have a yarn with a friend or a co-worker.

Read more of these stories over here.

But don't just take our word for it.

Check out these reviews from the legends that are buying the shirts, wearing them, and starting conversations at work, at the shops, and out in the community.

Join Us

Get yourself a TradeMutt conversation starter for Funky Shirt Friday this week.

They’re built tough so you don’t have to be, loaded with conversation-starting features from the funky print through to the QR code under the chest pocket, and they’ve been helping us make an incredible difference to blue collar mental health in Australia.