Berlin’s Mitte district is bustling. It’s Black Friday weekend and this is the biggest shopping area in Germany’s capital city – the flow of people walking through the narrow streets lined with boutique stores is constant. In the heart of it all, on Alte Schönhauserstrasse, a Maap logo is illuminated as evening darkness closes in. It’s the sign outside of a new Maap LaB retail concept store, the second of its kind in Europe and the seventh globally. It may have all begun in the city of Melbourne for the Australian brand, but, as I’m about to find out, Maap has plans to take on the world.
Next door to the new store, the brand’s founders Oliver Cousins and Jarrad Smith are sitting down to have coffee – they’re here for the grand opening and to ride and meet with the numerous brand ambassadors who have also made the journey over. Their very presence in Berlin is already a clear sign of Maap’s ethos, and how the company is run. It might be over ten years since they created the first piece of Maap kit, but Cousins and Smith remain as hands-on as ever. They tell me that the brand was founded out of their shared love for the sport, something that has only grown as Maap has grown with it.
“To walk into Berlin and see the Maap shop is probably one of the proudest moments I’ve had in the last 10 years. It’s such a cool city, my sister designed the store and we worked on it for years, pouring over sketches, so much goes into it,” Cousins smiles. “It’s also a really proud moment to engage with the local community. There are so many cyclists around and this is giving them a place to come and meet. There’s also customers walking in discovering the brand for the first time, who aren’t even necessarily cyclists themselves.”
In a world which is becoming increasingly digitised, Maap’s investment in physical retail spaces in the form of their LaB stores might be surprising to some. Cousins' last sentence sums up the importance of real-life interaction with both current and prospective customers, however. There’s huge value to be had both in building local communities and catching the attention of those passing by.
“We know we have got customers here in Berlin so we’re servicing our community, but then it is also being discovered by those who haven’t heard of us. There’s adjacent subcultures, people who are into design or art, or maybe they just commute to work, they can see the brand,” Smith adds.
As Maap’s range has expanded in recent years, the brand has experimented in different product categories, now also producing both casual clothing and Alt-Road (alternative road) kit. This movement to fuse both lifestyle and cycling is imperative to Maap’s overall strategy, and is part of what has helped them achieve such impressive growth so far.
“Before when I used to ride down Beach Road [in Melbourne], there would only be like one or two people on the road. Now, there’s just an influx of new people to the sport who probably didn't grow up watching the Tour de France and the races,” Cousins says.
“They're probably not as educated in the racing side of it, but they've come into it from the community and because their friends are doing it. That's partly because the brands that have come in have made it more accessible. If I think about myself when I was working and racing I would sneak out of the office to do Thursday night crits because it wasn’t seen as a cool thing. There’s lots of brands that have come into that space and helped change the perception so cycling isn’t seen as daggy [ed. not fashionable or attractive] anymore as it genuinely was back in 2014.”
The saying goes that if you look good, you feel good, and Maap is certainly helping to prove that the kit on offer for cyclists goes a long way in attracting new cohorts of people to the sport. Ensuring that the brand has options for a range of riders, be that those who want looser kit or more race-focused outfits, is imperative to ensuring that everyone feels welcome in cycling.
“We have adapted our kit so you can just wear a t-shirt with bib shorts, for example, by adding pockets to the shorts. We started to introduce looser bibs to the collection but still do that in a cool way, still creating that Maap aesthetic,” Smith says. “It’s our desire as well to wear all the products we create. When we started Maap we wanted a very tight and professional aesthetic but now I like to wear a bit more relaxed, mixing tight and looser stuff. It’s great to travel all over the world and see how people adapt and wear the product differently. People experiment, we’ve seen famous K-Pop stars wearing Maap, but also have seen people in our t-shirts on gravel or road rides in Los Angeles."
“I think when we started the brand it was never about prescribing one look,” Cousins adds. “We didn't want people to feel like they had to wear what their mates were wearing, we wanted them to mix and match wherever they wanted because it represents them and their own sense of design.”
Crucial to building a welcoming and inclusive brand is also Maap’s broad-ranging ambassador programme. The Australian company takes the approach of choosing riders who are influential in their local regions, rather than solely looking at social media followers or likes. This means that micro-communities can be created where likeminded cyclists can meet and discover Maap and what it stands for.
“There's no one true ambassador, it’s dependent on the region, but we like to pick riders who are really inclusive and want to support the brand, not just keeping it to one little group,” Smith says. “For us being based in Australia, it's hard for us to activate globally so we leverage those ambassadors and have a little network. It becomes a mission for us to touch more places without having to rely on our own staff to do that. The Radical Women of Cycling ride series is a great example of how it works [ed. a series which brought together women and women-identifying cyclists to ride, inspire discourse and champion female participation].
But while Maap’s roots are in the communities it was born from, Smith and Cousins are also keen to stress that high-performance kit is still a key pillar of the brand’s identity. It was recently announced that Maap would enter the WorldTour for the first time in 2025 as kit partners for the men’s and women’s professional teams Jayco-Alula and Liv-Alula-Jayco. It’s a big moment for the founders who explain that it has always been part of their dream to see their brand at the highest rungs of professional bike racing.
“You could probably look at objectively and say there's better ways to spend that money if you're talking about growing a business. But Jarrad and I are just passionate about the sport. It is a dream for us to do it, and I don't think we're really banking on any kind of halo effect that we are going to grow our sales by doing it or anything, but it was more if we could do it in a way that represents our brand, then let's do it,” Cousins says.
“I also think quality-wise we've got to link ourselves with the best in the world. These riders are the best in the world and we want to be part of that. We believe in racing. We want to make it look as cool as it can be, but we always said you can’t really have one without the other. We’re not a fashion brand but we’re not typical performance either.”
“We want to be able to make cycling cooler and bring it to the rest of the world,” Smith adds. “It's going into the WorldTour not just to have a team, but to try to make the WorldTour a bit more like the way we see cycling and encourage people to watch it. Maybe it can make it cooler and more approachable for people.”
While Maap has undoubtedly established itself as a powerhouse brand in its industry, Jarrad and Cousins are transparent that there have been challenges on the way to building a company which has the means to sponsor WorldTour teams and create a global network of shops. Both founders started off as keen cyclists themselves and have had to learn some things the hard way over the last decade when it comes to running a clothing brand.
“We have had all the usual struggles you hear from people starting businesses which probably all stems back to funding and cash flow. Those things drive a lot of decisions that you make. Can we do this? Can we make that second production? I think now, as we grow and mature, we can hire experienced talent to take some of that pressure on,” Smith says.
A focus on steady growth and not expanding too quickly too soon is also something both men see as a key reason why Maap is still thriving today: “Through Covid-19, it was such a positive thing for cycling and it would have been easy to go and over order but we were very cautious, we didn’t overextend ourselves, order too much that we couldn’t pay for. We feel like although we had a spike during Covid, we have retained those people in cycling, probably because we have always been developing new products and designs,” Cousins explains.
As they sit in one of the trendiest cities in the world discussing the opening of their seventh store and hint at the big plans they have to amplify their partnership with the men’s and women’s Jayco squads, it’s clear that Cousins and Smith are living out what they have always dreamed of for Maap. It leaves me wondering, with all they’ve done so far, where does the brand go from here?
“Firstly, we have to prove it. The stores are only just open, you can’t just tick it off. We really have a lot of hard work to make them successful and constantly change them, and monitor the rides and the community activities. That’s probably the hardest challenge, how do you keep doing that? How do you keep reinventing the fun and make people want to come back for more?” Cousins says.
When it comes to blue-sky thinking, both founders have a vision for Maap that will eventually transcend cycling, and themselves.
“If you look further into the future, we want to create an enduring brand that is flourishing beyond us. Brands like Patagonia or North Face, there's plenty of examples of brands that are 50 or 60 years old and still popular,” Smith comments. “They're having net positive impacts in the world. We are going through those steps to build a brand that is really sustainably focused. I'd be really proud to step away from Maap at that point and see it continue. That would be the ultimate game for us.”
Cousins is in agreement with his co-founder. Maap is certainly thriving as one of the most successful cycling apparel brands in the current market, but it didn’t get this far without drive and ambition from the two men who started it all. Leaving behind something to make sure that their hard work will count for generations to come is something that will remain at the forefront of both Cousins and Smith’s minds, and will continue to inform every next decision that they make.
“It’s role succession. There's a plan of success after us. We're planning that we build it and then hand it down to people that can maintain it, but we'll always be part of it and love it,” Cousins grins.
“I don’t think we're ever going to stop riding and stop being passionate about brand or the fashion industry in general. I don't think you ever stop innovating or having that passion. We will keep evolving the product, staying true to our roots, which is how we've built what we now. With that, we’ll continue to see things grow.”
