About Foxhole
Foxhole Medals is an Australian and Veteran-owned and operated company which has been running for nearly 20 years.
All of our products and services are either manufactured or assembled inhouse at our purpose-built warehouse near Hobart Airport in Cambridge, Tasmania.
Every item we produce comes with a lifetime guarantee.
At its core, my passion is still creating beautiful products, and I’m especially excited about two new projects that I’ll be able to reveal later this year (which I personally think have the potential to be complete game changers in the industry).
I am so proud of what Foxhole Medals has become. We’re never going to be the cheapest - we can’t afford to be with the quality of our products and our staff - but we aim every.single.day. to be the finest medal mounters in Australia and we’d love the opportunity to look after you, your family, and your business.
Thank you for letting me share my story with you, and for letting my Foxhole family look after yours.
Cheers,
Jimmy Grice
Director
Where it started
The Foxhole Story
I joined the Army Reserves as a skinny 16-year-old and very proud third-generation Defence member in my home town of Hobart then changed over to Pussers (or the Navy, in civvie terms). When I received my first 2 medals in 1999 – the AASM with East Timor clasp and INTERFET - I became a loyal customer of Glendinnings (for those of you old enough to remember them) for my ribbon bars.
The initial spark of what would become Foxhole Medals was ignited in 2004 during my newest posting with the RAN in Nowra, New South Wales - with no local Glendinnings - as a Petty Officer Aircraft Technician Instructor.
I was undoubtedly suffering with a bit of anxiety at the time, and hence my perfectionism was in full flight. While the lovely lady at the local clothing store (hi Helga!) did an admirable job of my ribbon bars and medals, I decided to give them a go myself ‘just as a bit of a hobby’. Famous last words.
As a now somewhat-polished Navy boy, I set out to make the best ribbon bars and medal set I possibly could with the best quality materials I could afford. Toye Kenning & Spencer ribbon, die struck replica medals, and I tweaked the court-mounting process and used acrylic backing board instead of flimsy, entirely non-weatherproof cardboard or buckram.
I fell in love that night with the entire process.
The slicing of quality colourfast ribbon at just the right length with razor-sharp scissor blades; a perfectly trimmed board providing the foundation for flawless tape application; the almost meditative repetition of perfect stitching. A thousand tiny steps all needing to be done faultlessly and with quality materials to create an end result of perfection. Just like fixing one of my beloved Seahawks, but in miniature form.
And that was it really. The guys in the office were the first ones to put orders in after they’d seen mine, then word got round. Before long, ‘James Grice Medal Mounting’ was servicing Navy customers from Albatross, then Nowra generally (the clothing store was referring customers to me too), expanding to the south coast of New South Wales, and then great support from RSL Tasmania when I moved back in 2006.
At this point, I had so many orders that I literally had to choose to shut it all down and get a real job, or make it into something.
And so Foxhole Medals was born.
I initially operated from my mum and dad’s garage in Honeywood, then from a custom-built garage at home with my first staff member. I became the third medal mounter in Australia to open an eCommerce store in 2007 (behind two large-scale companies), and moved to the 'big smoke' with two Hobart-CBD shopfronts and 6 staff. We were fortunate to be ahead of the COVID remote working trend when we moved the business to home in August 2019 as online and phone sales dominated the retail market.
In February 2022, my dream of working from a custom-designed warehouse came true. We moved the team to our brand new premises at Cambridge near Hobart Airport, and our unique processes and systems have become even more efficient. This gave us the confidence to take on and successfully deliver the biggest manufacturing and assembling job Foxhole has ever done of some 6,500 (and counting) engraved medal sets that July.
At its core, my passion is still creating beautiful products, and I’m especially excited about two new projects that I’ll be able to reveal later this year (which I personally think have the potential to be complete game changers in the industry).
I am so proud of what Foxhole Medals has become. We’re never going to be the cheapest - we can’t afford to be with the quality of our products and our staff - but we aim every.single.day. to be the finest medal mounters in Australia and we’d love the opportunity to look after you, your family, and your business.