Dads Locker started with one hard-to-shop-for dad — mine.

I grew up on the Mid North Coast of Australia, and most of what I know about being useful I learned from my father. Weekends were fishing trips, tinkering in the shed, and him teaching me the things a bloke should know — how to tie a proper knot, how to back a trailer, how to change my own brake pads. It was the ordinary stuff of a father and son, and it stuck.

Dad was a simple man. Ask him what he wanted for his birthday or for Christmas and you’d get a shrug and a “don’t worry about me.” He was genuinely hard to buy for — and, if I’m honest, he didn’t really know what to get himself either.

Years later I worked out something that had been in front of me the whole time. Those comfortable chairs parked outside the shops in every shopping centre? They’re where the dads sit. So much of retail was built for someone else, and the blokes were left waiting by the door.

It seemed to me there had to be an easier way — both for Dad to shop, and for the rest of us to shop for him.

So I built Dads Locker: one place that curates the things dads actually need and quietly want, so buying for Dad is simple, fast, and easy on the wallet. No wandering the aisles, no guesswork, no chair by the entrance.

Today it’s run by a small family who care about getting it right — changing, in a small way, how fathers shop and how they’re shopped for.

— The Dads Locker family