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.
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