Farm World’s annual women in agriculture lunch was founded by the late Angela Betheras, who was also the first female chair of Lardner Park, which hosts the event.
The women in agriculture lunch has hosted a range of guest speakers in the past nine years.
This year, one of the guest speakers was home grown.
Danielle (Dani) Pearce was born and raised on a dairy farm at Leongatha, in Gippsland.
As a young woman, she founded Merry People, the gumboot manufacturer for Australian women who live on and off the farm.
Dani spoke about how she used the resilience she earned from growing up in Gippsland and in a family of mixed ethnicity to build her brand and company.
In the early days of her business, Dani had a stall at Farm World where she sold her Merry boots and used direct customer feedback to guide her design ideas.
“I came to Farm World as a child, with my parents, and in the early days of Merry People I took a stall to sell my gumboots,” Dani recalled for the audience.
She said she was inspired by watching her parents, who are still dairy farmers at Leongatha, that she could develop and run a business.
“Growing up on a dairy farm and surrounded by people running a business, investing in assets, dealing with uncertainty and risk – it taught me that life is not linear,” Dani said.
“My Dad is Australian and Mum is Indian, so growing up as a mixed-race child, in a rural community, I understood diversity, and I felt comfortable being different.”
Dani also credits sport with helping her understand about risk and resilience.
“Sport taught me the growth mindset of winning, and of humility, because I didn’t always win,” she said.
“I also learned how to choose what I’m good at and concentrate on that.”
Dani went to Melbourne for university, then on to a working life in the banking sector and as a project manager.
This is where she developed her idea of an everyday gumboot that appealed to women and was costed in the mid-range.
She developed a business plan for her “gumboot idea” and used her savings to manufacture a small range of gumboots.
“The risk was I would spend all my savings and have to return to the farm with boxes of gumboots that I couldn’t sell,” Dani said.
Unfortunately, Dani could not attract support in Australia that met her desire to create an Australian manufactured product.
“My business wasn’t big enough,” she said.
So she went on a steep learning curve to learn about manufacturing possibilities overseas and how to import products to Australia.
That led her to China, with several possibilities for manufacturing her gumboot range in an overseas factory.
“Going back to the airport to fly home to Australia, I felt an immense sense of accomplishment of getting this far with my dream, and I knew ‘I can do what’s next’,” Dani said.
Back in Australia, she recruited retail and wholesale outlets and set up her stall at local weekend farmers’ markets.
The feedback from customers caused Dani to redevelop her brand, as a product that was solving problems for people.
She also developed an online store, which rapidly grew a customer base, and Dani soon found herself working seven days selling her product.
She recruited a team around her to support the business, and herself and her growing family.
“Merry People tripled business in the year after my first child was born,” Dani said.
“It was a lot to juggle.
“With child number two, my husband became a stay at home parent.”
Merry People now employs people in 25 equivalent full-time roles in Australia, with 60 per cent of the workforce women.
The business also supports employment in the factory in China, and jobs in retail outlets across Australia.
The range continues to diversity, with sandals joining the range of gumboots last summer and a children’s range and mens’ waterproof gumboots also building the brand.
“I’m also planning to open my own retail store in Melbourne in 2026, so that’s the next project,” Dani said.
“I’m proud of what I learned growing up in Gippsland that has given me the skills to found and build this business.”
Merry People also has a philanthropic aspect, providing gumboots as raffle prizes to schools, kindergartens and childcare centres, and donates funds to other charitable causes, including programs for youth homelessness and the Mother’s Day Classic Foundation.
Merry People donated 500 boots for distribution to women affected by the Queensland floods in 2024.
“I wanted to do something in life with purpose. Merry People has enabled me to do that,” Dani said.
Telstra has sponsored the women in agriculture lunch at Farm World since its inception, nine years ago.