Haigh hastings 2

Haigh & Hastings comes from a land Down Under

Co-founded in 2013 by Matt Sears and Simon Haigh, Haigh & Hastings is an Australian watch and lifestyle brand that is already beginning to make a lot of noise over here in the UK.

After recently signing a distribution partnership with Giles Bushby’s GB&RS, the Australian brand is imminently to be stocked in UK retailers House of Fraser, Emson Haig of Lakeside, Essex, Sheffield-based Green & Benz, Norwich’s Dipples, Cuff & Co of York and online with House of Fraser and Watch O. These are in addition to its existing Australian retailers and successful online sales at www.haighandhastings.com.

The original inspiration for Sears and Haigh was the famous line from T. E. Lawrence’s 1922 literary masterpiece Seven Pillars: ‘Who dares wins,’ and having recently teamed up with world-renowned Swiss watch designer Emmanuel Gueit (of Audemars Piguet, Fossil and Rolex fame), the brand is clearly no shrinking violet.

The company created its first model, the M2 Diver Automatic, in February 2014 and conducted a soft launch in its test market Perth, Western Australia, using the tagline: “Timepieces for Dangerous Men.” The product, brand and tagline elicited a solid response from a variety of people and organisations, particularly in the US, UK and Australia, including in the military, sporting and charitable spaces, with a series of special edition watch lines resulting and more still to come.

The brand and company now has a handful of product lines and is attracting significant media and financial attention, new customers and new business partners, including partnerships with the Western Force rugby team, Perth Thunder Ice Hockey team, the Australian Ice Hockey League and partnerships with some leading sports stars as brand ambassadors in Australia and the UK.

The brand name uses the surname of Simon Haigh and the surname of the wife of Matthew Sears – Hastings. The company sums up its vision: “Our goal with the Haigh & Hastings brand is to present to Australia and the world high quality timepieces that are classic in design, built for daily wear, with a subtle and uniquely Australian flair. The watch styles were conceived with our local lifestyle of hard work, adventure and affinity for the outdoors and sea in mind, whilst embodying a level of refinement suitable for the boardroom. In our international travels, we have noticed that men are adding vibrant colour to their dress code, so we already have 243 vibrant watch-strap variants”.

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