This is an important year for Australian watch brand Maxum Watches, celebrating its 25th anniversary.
Anniversaries are an opportunity to reflect on significant milestones and plan for the future, and over more than two decades, Maxum has achieved a great deal – distributing in excess of 750,000 watches across Australia, New Zealand, and around the world.
It’s unique to be an Australian watch brand.
Comprehensive research by Jeweller has established that there are 2,500 individual watch brands internationally; only around 15 of those can claim to be an ‘Australian brand’.
This means that Australia’s place on the global watchmaking stage is minute – to say the least!
Identity becomes increasingly important when you’re a relatively small player in a fiercely competitive global market.
Many Australian brands have attempted to draw their line in the sand in the past.
Some have attempted to become known for elegant and sophisticated designs, while others focus on durable and functional timepieces suitable for everyday wear.
And then there’s Maxum Watches! Founded in 1999 by Justin Veil, who is also on the executive board of Designa Accessories, the brand has selected five vital cultural pillars as the foundation of its identity: fashion, sport, art, music, and film.
Collaborations with prominent figures in these fields have been the compass for Maxum Watches, repeatedly reshaping the brand and building connections with new audiences.
While the brand’s place in the retail market is enviable, it came from humble beginnings.
TWO DECADES OF MAXUM WATCHES
Start the clock
The origins of Maxum Watches as a brand are intricately connected to a fashion label from a foregone era of Australian culture: Mambo Graphics.
Founded in the 1980s, Mambo is an Australian clothing company that became a counter-culture icon. The brand has produced a range of products over the years, including watches.
Well-known for juvenile and edgy designs — rendered largely irrelevant once the extremes of the internet became increasingly accessible — the brand was a sensation in Australia.
Designa Accessories designed, developed, and distributed Mambo Watches for seven years before Veil founded Maxum Watches. Mambo had a strict retail philosophy: it was only sold in surf stores because of its connection with that target audience.
In essence, Mambo didn’t want to ‘sell out’ by appearing in major department stores.
Veil explains that he had a strong business relationship with Myer at the time, and the retailer desperately wanted Mambo on its shelves.
“We were doing a significant amount of business with Myer," he says.
"Every time we would meet with them, they would tell us that we had to talk to Mambo, and Myer had to have that brand.
“I kept explaining that we couldn’t do it; it went against the brand’s entire philosophy of working with independent retailers, and Mambo would never accept that. After getting particularly irritated, the Myer staff threw us a proposal one afternoon.
“Why don’t you make us a bloody watch brand then?” the Myer staff asked.
Veil says he didn’t think much of the idea until discussing it further with his staff over the next few weeks.
After finally committing to the concept, several brand managers brainstormed ideas for a watch brand that could appeal to the market Mambo dominated at the time.
It was decided that some core principles would need to be in place, namely that the watches should be built for a surf and outdoor lifestyle.
A meeting to pitch the brand was scheduled with Myer, and Veil says he initially felt very unprepared on arrival, armed with only a handful of design sketches and some bold ideas.
“They absolutely loved it. They put it in an order based on pictures,” he recalls laughing.
“I guess it was exactly what they were looking for. It wasn’t long before we had around 400 retailers stocking Maxum.
"We never set out to call the brand ‘cool’ because as soon as you call it cool, it’s not. But we were very proud of what we sold.
“We were in independent stores and department stores without any shame, and it started to bring customers from surf stores into department stores.”
Appearing on shelves in independent and department stores was a notable ‘crossing of the Rubicon’ for a brand like Maxum.
For example, brands other than Mambo, such as Oakley, resisted appearing in department stores to preserve that counter-culture appeal.
“It was pretty simple at the time. If you were cool, you didn’t appear in department stores. Ripcurl was a huge example of this," Veil remembers.
"Ripcurl was nearly the number one selling watch in Australia at the time.
“Maxum Watches started as a brand for department stores, and after a year or so, Surf Dive ‘n’ Ski approached us and said they wanted the brand. It snowballed from there, and over the next five years, we experienced tremendous growth.”
TWO DECADES OF MAXUM WATCHES
Many hands make light work
Now, 25 years later, Maxum Watches faces the same challenges as other unique Australian watch brands.
Australia has a relatively small domestic market compared with larger countries, and forging a connection with a sufficient customer base can be difficult. There’s also fierce competition from international, well-established brands with overwhelming global recognition.
Building brand awareness and developing effective marketing strategies is also crucial for Australian brands, and limited marketing budgets can make it difficult to reach target audiences efficiently.
Veil says Maxum Watches has developed effective strategies to overcome these hurdles.
“I don’t think of things like that as unique issues facing watch brands. It’s a brand like any other,” he explains.
“It’s really important to put the financial support behind ventures like Maxum Watches, which typically involves marketing. It comes down to money and effort more than anything.
“The types of collaborations we focus on reinforce our Australian heritage which is a key selling point.
"We’re proud to be designed in Australia, for an Australian lifestyle; that’s how the brand has made it this far. That’s also how we will expand in the future.”
The brand's most recent collaboration is with an indie rock band: Maxum x Hockey Dad.
This partnership has produced the Base Camp model, a sleek silver 44mm dial with a blue bezel and a blue smooth silicone strap coupled with 200M water resistance. There’s also the Burning Sand model in black.
The company is anticipating the release of its next collaboration with Taylor Steele, an Emmy award-winning film director. Steele has been in the surf film industry for more than 20 years.
The Maxum x Taylor Steele model will be released as part of the Summer 2024 Collection, and will also coincide with Taylor’s appointment as creative director for Maxum.
These two collaborations are the latest in a long line of carefully selected projects.
Previous ambassadors include Daniel McPherson (actor), Gian Rooney (swimmer), Mark Matthews (surfer), Richie Vass (surfer and UFC fighter), and Matt Rodgers (rugby league).
“With the collaborations we’ve launched recently – including the project with Hockey Dad – we’ve generated great interest from local media,” he said.
“It’s possible to create significant connections between bands and brands, the support can be fantastic, and leaning into that angle of being a proudly homegrown business resonates well.
“I think in the future, we’ll be able to take these kinds of projects even further.”
Function and form
There's an intriguing conceptual issue facing brands such as Maxum Watches. In the timeless wrestle between function and form, function has been rendered largely irrelevant for watches.
In other words, very few people wear watches today to know the time. Most people carry smartphones and smartwatches, which are more of a media device than a watch.
This transition began before the widespread adoption of smartwatches among consumers, and watches have always been viewed as men’s jewellery to a degree.
That aside, why do so many people still wear watches if the primary purpose of the products is to know the time?
The answer, of course, is fashion.
With so much of men’s jewellery focused on minimalism, there are limited opportunities to ‘flash some cash’ in front of friends, family, or potential romantic partners. Watches are a rare exception to this rule.
While this might seem like common sense for most readers, it poses an interesting challenge for watch brands. How do you sell a product with a core function no one needs?
“We’ve always thought of Maxum Watches as a fashion piece. We’ve never really thrown ourselves against competitors like Seiko, Citizen, or any other traditional watch brands that have kept a focus on telling the time,” Veil explains.
“So, the way that you combat this change in consumer preferences is by designing hot watches. Watches that make blokes out shopping on a Saturday afternoon stop in their tracks because they want it. It’s as simple as that.”
Maxum Watches' two-decade journey is a compelling case study that underscores the pivotal role of identity and strategic collaboration in business. It isn't easy to establish a presence in a small market defined by a competitive industry dominated by well-established international rivals.
Despite these challenges, the brand has achieved international recognition by striking a balance between staying true to its cultural roots and evolving with consumer preferences over 25 years of significant change in consumer preference.
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