Name:
Guy Dawson – Payless Promotions.

Where is your place of business?
Our Head Office is in Sale and we have a second office in Traralgon.

Tell us about your business:
We develop uniform and merchandise solutions for organisations with the objective to strengthen their brand consistency and the value of their organisation.

Why did you choose to be a part of GROW Gippsland?
We want to part of ‘something bigger’ and feel that GROW offers us the opportunity to achieve this through focusing on inclusive employment and other social and environmental factors we can improve upon in our business. Furthermore, we recognise a huge number of other organisations want the same thing, so aligning ourselves with these values potentially makes us a compliant and valuable part of their supply chain.

How has the GROW Gippsland program assisted or inspired you so far?
We want to be better people and a better organisation but have struggled to find the time, resources and systems to make this happen. We are excited at the prospect of GROW providing us with the framework and support to turn our good intentions into something real.

Why do you think it’s important to employ locally?
Employing locally is a huge (and I think, the easiest) part of a circular economy. We need to further educate Gippslanders to buy locally as this will create more jobs. It seems obvious then that we fill these jobs with more talented Gippslanders and the cycle continues.

I think the more relevant question is: Why the hell wouldn’t you employ locally? We have always hired local talent and our amazing team is, by far, our most valuable asset!

Tell us about a time that you were proud to be a part of your business/organisation:
Something that continually makes me proud as a business owner and CEO is seeing young staff we hire as trainees or apprentices grow and mature into confident adults and highly effective employees. Sometimes this means they leave their role with us for bigger and better things elsewhere, but I think this makes me most proud of them and the role our organisation is playing within our community.