Max Brand Guidelines: Landmark Group’s Own-Label Value Fashion Chain, From the Gulf to Indore

One short name for a group’s value fashion.

Max is the value-fashion chain of the Landmark Group, the Dubai-based retail and hospitality group that, Retail Gazette noted in May 2026, grew from a single store in Bahrain in 1973 into a business with more than 2,200 stores and outlets. English Wikipedia names Micky Jagtiani as the founder of the group. A Gulf News profile of one of its executives describes Micky and Renuka Jagtiani running a Mothercare outlet in Bahrain in 1992, before the group was set up in Dubai, and Renuka Jagtiani is chairwoman of Lifestyle International, the group’s Indian company, FashionUnited reported in October 2025. The group runs a family of separately branded chains; English Wikipedia lists Max beside Babyshop, Centrepoint, Splash and Home Centre.

The chain opened in May 2004, English Wikipedia says, citing the company. Accounts differ on the city. English Wikipedia places the start in Abu Dhabi, while Vasanth Kumar, who joined as the first employee of Max in India and later became its executive director, told Entrepreneur India in August 2017 that the concept was launched in Dubai in 2004. The idea was clothing for women, men and children sold under the chain’s own name rather than as a shop for other labels: Kumar described the format as “virtually” all private label, and English Wikipedia says the merchandise is created by in-house designers.

India followed quickly. Kumar told Entrepreneur India that the Indian business started out of a two-bedroom apartment, that the first team was put together in 2005 while it searched for a site, and that the first Indian store opened in Indore in 2006. He called the first four years a real test, because a format built almost entirely on its own label is demanding to run, and said that by mid-2017 the chain had 190 stores in India. In India, Max is a division of Lifestyle International Private Limited, the group’s Indian arm, which also runs a value format called Easybuy, according to FashionUnited. Kumar described Easybuy to Entrepreneur India in 2017 as a franchise-run format for smaller towns.

New logo, new stores, new screens.

Max’s identity is shaped less by one product than by the promise of affordable newness across a whole family wardrobe. Kumar told Entrepreneur India in 2017 that the Indian team had cut the time it took to bring fresh lines into stores from 60 days to 45. In March 2026 DFU Publications reported that Max used a showcase at Lakmé Fashion Week on 22 March 2026 to mark two decades in India.

The clearest design moment came in October 2025. BW Retail World reported that Max opened a new flagship at Phoenix Marketcity in Bengaluru alongside what it called the brand’s most extensive refresh to date: a new logo, a new visual language and a unified design system covering store architecture, packaging and digital platforms. The Bengaluru store added redesigned trial rooms, new lighting, “Endless Aisle” kiosks for browsing stock held online, and digital point-of-sale systems with itemised billing, and its collections were described as modern cuts, relaxed fits and refreshed colour palettes. The same report put the Indian chain at more than 500 stores in 140 cities, covering metros and Tier 1 and Tier 2 markets, with an e-commerce site and app; DFU Publications gave more than 535 stores across over 200 Indian cities in March 2026, and described a new-format store of 14,000 square feet in Chennai.

In the Gulf, technology has been part of the shop floor for some time. In December 2018 the Forbes contributor Katie Baron described two interactive, bilingual mirrors built by Microsoft and Ombori for the Max store at Dubai’s Ibn Battuta Mall. The one at the entrance woke when its sensors detected someone nearby and invited shoppers to scan a QR code, then browse product pages and stock levels on their own phones; the one deeper inside responded to voice, offered selfies and suggested outfits. In October 2026, The Peninsula in Qatar reported that Max had opened a flagship of more than 38,000 square feet at City Center Doha, with open layouts, women’s, men’s and children’s collections and an AI virtual try-on feature developed with Google Cloud.

Malls, apps and fascias.

Gulf fashion, home and online retailers present themselves first through the places where people shop. In the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and their neighbours, many chains trade from large mall units, and the store fascia, a name in lit letters above a wide entrance, is often the first piece of branding a shopper sees. Groups that run several chains often place them side by side in the same mall, or gather them under one umbrella name, so that a single visit can cover clothing, shoes, children’s goods and homeware.

Value-fashion and home chains speak through campaigns timed to the retail calendar: seasonal collections, catalogues and named sale events. Their identity work tends to show up in store refits as much as in advertising. A new logo usually arrives with a redesigned flagship, new signage and new in-store graphics, and then spreads to the rest of the estate store by store, sometimes over months or years.

Online retailers carry the same task onto app screens, product pages and delivery packaging. There the brand becomes a set of repeated elements: a wordmark, a colour, a tone of voice in notifications, and the boxes and bags that arrive at the door. Store groups in the region also run their own apps and click-and-collect services, so the line between the shop and the screen is less sharp than it once was.

Store names are usually plain and descriptive, and the companies publish them in English as they appear above the door. Corporate pages and dated press coverage give the facts behind those names: who founded each business and when, which family or group owns it, and whether its shares are listed on an exchange such as Tadawul, ADX or DFM. These guides draw on those dated sources and describe colour and type only as our own interpretation, with no logo or fascia reproduced.

One name, two operating arms.

Max is run in two halves. The business in the Middle East, North Africa and Southeast Asia is led by Hani Weiss, chief executive of Max Fashion for that region; Retail Gazette described it in May 2026 as running across ten markets in the Middle East, Africa and Southeast Asia. In October 2026, Max Fashion said it had more than 830 stores across 16 countries, according to The Peninsula, and Weiss said the chain had been in Qatar since 2007. In India, Sumit Chandna became chief executive of Max Fashion on 1 October 2025, FashionUnited reported, after three years as deputy chief executive; Shital Mehta, who had led Max and Easybuy for eight years, took a broader role as managing director of Lifestyle International.

Weiss gave Retail Gazette a picture of the machinery behind the stores. Max now tracks shipments at container level, including the products and SKUs inside each one; limited capsules can take around eight to ten weeks from idea to shelf; and store teams carry mobile tools showing stock levels, fast-moving lines and top products by category, so they can move stock without waiting for head office. He said design teams use AI to read what customers search for online, including colours, shapes, prints and fits. He also stressed local difference, telling the paper that shoppers in Riyadh and Jeddah dress differently, go to different events and need to be catered for differently.

For a design guide, Max shows how a value chain can carry one short name across very different markets, and how a refresh can be applied to logo, store architecture, packaging and app at the same time rather than piece by piece. Compare it with its Landmark Group stablemates Splash and Centrepoint. For this guide we use an ink blue, a warm coral and a sand neutral with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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