Welcome to the next episode of MyoMatters. This podcast is with Catherine Doonan from COSBOA (Council of Small Business Organisations Australia). Throughout her career, Catherine has been dedicated to bringing together varied groups—government agencies, industry associations, and business owners—to ensure their voices are central in decision-making processes.

Currently, as Head of Engagement at the Council of Small Business Organisations Australia (COSBOA), Catherine advocates for the interests of small businesses across the country. Her work is further enhanced by roles such as co-lead for the Small Business Working Group within the National Cyber Strategy, member of the Independent Expert Panel for Female Entrepreneur Decadal Planning, and participation on the CSCAU Steering Committee, where she collaborates on strengthening cyber awareness and certification for small businesses.

MWax is proudly Australian owned and has supported the therapy and sports profession markets for over 19 years. Renee, Brad and their team put their experience in the manual therapy industry, their ideas and knowledge into creating the perfect lubricant for manual therapy treatment. They started out making it in the staff kitchen and gradually moved into a fully dedicated production facility.

From their humble beginnings they now have a huge customer base and their balm is used in their 4 clinics along with many others across Australia. And they are now taking MWax to a larger global audience.

We are very pleased to have them both with us today to talk about the evolution of Mwax.

In this episode, we have James McQuie, the General Manager of OPC here to talk to us. OPC are one of our proud partners for 2024 and we can’t wait to hear what James has in store for us today.

James joined OPC Health or Orthotic & Prosthetic Centre as it was known, in 1992 as a Sales Consultant. OPC was both an Orthotic/Prosthetic clinic and a distribution business that had been established in 1985.

James remained there until 2000 when he moved to be National Sales Manager for a company based in Sydney, still involved in Allied Health sales. In 2010 the owner of OPC Health approached him to return and so for the past 14 years he has been the GM at OPC. In the last four years they were sold to a German company OPED Ag, who already owned OAPL ( Orthopaedic Appliances) and in 2021 the two entities merged. OAPL is the clinical business with 16 O & P clinics around Australia and OPC is the distribution business with warehouses in Melb, Syd and Adelaide and 25 sales staff nationally. A far cry from the team of two he was part of in 1992.