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Jodi McColl couldn’t find pure merino wool jumpers, so she decided to make her own

After moving to Yass in 2011, Jodi thought it would be simple to pick up a pure merino wool jumper to keep out the chill.

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PHOTOGRAPHY ABBIE MELLE

Jodi and her children on their property outside Yass in the Southern Tablelands of NSW.

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PHOTOGRAPHY ABBIE MELLE

Jodi preparing to send one of her designs to a customer.

When Jodi McColl moved to Yass, a prime wool-growing region, in the winter of 2011, she assumed it would be simple to pick up a pure merino jumper to keep out the chill. But she quickly hit a stumbling block.

“There was the odd piece, but it was mostly a blend or really high-end,” Jodi, 41, explains. “I thought, I’m living in the heartland of a fine-wool-producing area in Australia and I can’t find an Australian merino jumper on the shelves in our stores.”

Yass, about 60 kilometres north of Canberra in the Southern Tablelands of NSW, was particularly crisp that winter. Jodi recalls enduring a week of minus six-degree mornings not long after moving into the fixer-upper cottage she and her husband, Tim, 41, had bought. “I remember calling my mum and saying, ‘I can see frost on the carpet, it’s that cold!’,” she says with a smile.

Disappointed, Jodi shelved her wardrobe woes for a few years until her daughter, Flossie, was born, and the hunt for a pure wool children’s jumper turned up similarly lacklustre results. This time she decided to do something about it, dreaming up a line of fine merino wool jumpers for kids and adults under the label Bow & Arrow.

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The concept was simple: Jodi wanted to create affordable, quality wool jumpers that were easy care for everyday wear. As a child she’d spent school holidays at her uncle’s mixed farm in northern Victoria, “riding horses and helping in the shearing shed”. The experience instilled in Jodi a deep appreciation for wool. “It’s such an amazing fibre; it keeps you cool in summer and warm in winter,” she says. “I really wanted to see people wearing Australian merino wool.”

From idea to fruition was an intense 12-month research journey, exploring everything from manufacturers to inclusive sizing. The first range included a scoop-back jumper for women and crew-neck pull-overs for men and children in a classic colour palette. “It was pretty basic, and I thought, ‘How we can jazz this up a bit?’,” Jodi recalls.

Her solution was to add elbow patches in Liberty prints and tan suede, giving the jumpers a little English-countryside polish.

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PHOTOGRAPHY ABBIE MELLE

Jodi reading a magazine on the front verandah of her property in NSW's Southern Tablelands.

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PHOTOGRAPHY ABBIE MELLE

Jodi started Bow & Arrow because she wanted to see more Australians wearing Australian wool.

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With a background in advertising rather than fashion, Jodi says her biggest challenge was overcoming the niggling fear she was out of her depth.

“I just had so much self-doubt,” she admits. “It’s such a big risk — will people want to buy this product? That’s what I kept doubting in myself, will they wear it, will they like it, have I got the design right? I wanted a design that people could put on every day and not save for good.”

She got through it by turning to friends and family for honest feedback, and “just trying to put the right foot in front of the other”. When Bow & Arrow finally launched in 2015, Jodi was relieved at how well it was received.

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“It’s such an amazing fibre; it keeps you cool in summer and warm in winter,” she says. “I really wanted to see people wearing Australian merino wool.”

Despite her fears, the range was exactly what Aussie wool-lovers — including several of Yass’s own wool-growers — were looking for. Bow & Arrow now has 40 retail stockists and a loyal online customer base.

“They’ve come back year after year and supported me,” Jodi says. “That’s what keeps me going.”

Jodi was keen to repay the favour to her stockists, particularly those in Victoria, during the COVID lockdowns. As an online business Bow & Arrow escaped the worst of the pandemic, but Jodi was rocked by the impact it had on the stores that had backed her from the start — even now, her voice catches as she recalls the hardship they faced. “I really tried to help my Victorian stockists, I even took back stock,” she says. “It was really hard for Victoria.”

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