It began with a couple of bibshorts. That turns out easy sufficient.
“In the early days of starting the company, we realised that the first thing we needed was the best bibshorts,” MAAP co-founder Jarrad Smith explains to Biking Weekly, in Berlin. “We set about building that, and even today, we still use the blueprint of the bibs which we developed 10 years ago.
“Whilst you come to the logo, you get within the bibs, you’re comfy, after which you wish to have to shop for the jerseys, the jackets, the entirety else. The bibs had been and are the cornerstone, the enduring piece to construct the entire logo round.
“There was just a lot of product testing. If you don’t get the bibs right, then you’re not going to go back to that brand.”
That was once 10 years in the past, when MAAP was once simply Smith and his co-founder Oliver Cousins, understanding of the previous’s storage in Melbourne. Now, a decade on, the Australian logo has simply opened its 2nd retailer – a LaB in MAAP-speak – in Europe, and its 7th on this planet. It’s these days sponsoring its first WorldTour squad, Jayco AlUla, and is outwardly going from strength-to-strength.
“It’s mind-blowing to think I was sitting in my garage, packing bags, sending out socks and bibs, from that to now,” Smith says. “But it’s been such a busy journey over the ten years, it doesn’t feel abnormal to be here now. This feels like the right time and the right place.
“We have now this store right here in Berlin, in one of the most coolest neighbourhoods, and it’s superior. However it has been a large number of onerous paintings alongside the way in which, so it doesn’t really feel like a soar from day one to right here, there was a loopy construction adventure.”
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(Symbol credit score: MAAP/Alberto Viciana)
The two European stores – in Berlin and Amsterdam – are the proof of how far MAAP has come from those garage days, but are also not the limit of the ambitions. Both have opened in the last 12 months, along with five more across the world, with many more in the pipeline; it is just a coincidence that all these things have seemingly come at once, along with the Jayco deal.
“We had been at all times assured that we can be a main participant on this business,” Cousins adds. “Having a look on the house on the time, there have been a few manufacturers like us who had been coming from the surf business, and we noticed that chance in biking. We had a imaginative and prescient on a world scale, and there was once additionally this dream of opening retail shops too.
“We would have liked to have a store open every six months, or even every three months, but it all happened at once, and the deal with Jayco AlUla as well. You can have the greatest plans, but then everything gets thrown together at the same time. It wasn’t planned, but it’s going to lead to a pretty exciting 2025.”
Development a logo
Whether or not via design or likelihood, MAAP has surfed style tendencies and it’s honest to mention is these days cool within the biking international. It would no longer have the historical past of Castelli or the dimensions of Rapha, however this present day, anyway, it has the cachet.
“We’re not following trends or what we think is cool, we’re trying to be the innovator and do things differently,” Smith says.
“We’ve watched brands like Patagonia and North Face which have been able to stand the test of time, and return for different generations,” Cousins provides. “It’s in their core, the DNA, and so that’s what we’ve been trying to do. MAAP is not Oli and Jarred, it’s for everyone. We want to work towards opening more stores which are engaging with the community and also profitable, and potentially a bigger off-bike collection than now, so people are just wearing MAAP in the street. We’re not just trying to build a cycling brand, we want to build a global brand.”
In the long run, it kind of feels like the boys at the back of MAAP need the logo to be larger than the arena of biking, despite the fact that it kind of feels not likely that they’re going to abandon their origins in a bid to get there. Most likely be expecting extra t-shirts and leisurewear in time, however the ones bibshorts will at all times be there.
(Symbol credit score: MAAP)
“There’s no magic number that we feel we need to get to,” Cousins explains. “We’re no longer going to business values for scale. We’re almost definitely going to develop, however we’re no longer going to switch our philosophy round excellent merchandise to succeed in that. Style is fickle, and there are existence cycles, and we’ve simply were given to come back again to protecting it original and true.
“We’re a private company, so we’ve got no one else to answer to, there’s no stock price, there’s no minimum growth or venture capital. We have challenges like every other business, but we try to manage it, and be at the level of risk we feel comfortable with.”
Navigating Covid
Like the remainder of the biking business, MAAP was once no longer resistant to the moving dynamic of the pandemic and the very best hurricane that adopted. Alternatively, whilst different manufacturers had been pressured to near, had their earnings checked, or on the very least struggled with surplus inventory, it kind of feels just like the Australian logo was once lucky to be the appropriate dimension to sail via uneven waters.
“The bigger the company, the bigger the problem probably,” Cousins says. “I think we navigated it pretty well. We saw a big increase through Covid, but we didn’t over-extend ourselves. The biggest impact was probably our wholesale account base, but we were exposed too much to that.”
“We had a massive spike during Covid, like everyone, and then there was a dip in the wholesale afterwards,” Smith echoes. “But for us, the direct-to-consumer was still growing, so it sort of balanced itself out. Then 18 months later, our wholesale partners were getting a bit confident. We’ve been growing since then.”
What has labored for MAAP up to now, and its founders hope will proceed in 2025, is cautious expansion, and sticking to the values that had been shaped in that storage a decade in the past.
“We’re a design-led brand,” Cousins explains. “We are always trying to merge aesthetics and performance. We’re always saying to our team it’s not performance-led – it has to be aesthetically led and then perform well. So you don’t have one without the other. We don’t just let something slip through if it doesn’t tick both boxes, because that’s not authentic to what we believe in.”
