How Axia built a business working with FIFA and the American Secret Service

Read the original article in WatchPro.

It takes a certain amount of confidence to launch a Swiss-made mechanical watch company in your late 50s. It takes rather more to persuade FIFA to let you produce watches for the World Cup just a couple of years after making it your full-time job.

John Kanaras, founder and CEO of Axia Time, has managed both.

The former pharmaceutical executive started the company as a passion project in 2018, inspired by a disappointing watch he received after his university lacrosse team won a championship.

Axia has since carved out a niche producing highly customised Swiss-made watches for American universities, sports organizations, government agencies and the armed services.

Its clients and partners have included the College Football Playoff and Heisman Trophy, with FIFA providing the biggest international breakthrough to date.

Now Kanaras is looking beyond the US, with conversations underway with major European football clubs and further opportunities with FIFA.

WatchPro spoke to him about starting again at 60, breaking into Swiss watchmaking, the power of sporting fandom and turning a one-man passion project into a global business.

Origin story for Axia Time

WatchPro: What were you doing before starting Axia Time?

John Kanaras: I was in big pharma. I was sales and marketing lead in the vaccine space, first for Merck and then for a smaller European company called Valneva. I was the US general manager for about five years.

WatchPro: So this has been quite an unexpected second career?

John Kanaras: Yes, it’s been an unexpected journey. I think I’m an unexpected 60-year-old entrepreneur.

WatchPro: Were you always interested in watches?

John Kanaras: I was. I was a watch enthusiast from an early age, and that’s really the backstory to how this whole business started.

I played lacrosse at university and, in my senior year, we won the Ivy League championship and made an unexpected run to the Final Four. The university gave us a watch to commemorate that season, but for me the styling and quality of the watch didn’t measure up to the memories and meaningfulness of the moment.

I literally looked for about 30 years for a watch that I felt properly celebrated that season. When I couldn’t find what I was looking for, Axia was born. I was trying to solve a problem I had personally.

WatchPro: When did you start the business?

John Kanaras: I started in 2018 as a passion project on the side, doing projects here and there for specific teams. It just kept growing and growing, and I left my day job in 2024 to do this full time.

WatchPro: Your proposition is essentially Swiss-made commemorative watches. How do you actually get them made?

John Kanaras: There has been a lot of learning over the years and the model has evolved quite a bit.

The first project was for my alma mater’s lacrosse programme when we were celebrating its 100th anniversary. Everyone knew I was a watch guy, so they said, “Why don’t you design a watch to celebrate the anniversary?”

For that first project, I worked with a private-label manufacturer in Switzerland. They did everything A to Z. We worked on the design together and they produced the watches.

Over time, that evolved into me creating my own designs, sourcing components through an intermediary and having everything shipped to a watchmaker in Switzerland for assembly.

We’ve essentially become a virtual manufacturer. We design our own cases, dials and components. We buy movements from Sellita or source ETA movements through a supplier, then everything is shipped to our watchmaker in Switzerland for assembly before coming to the US for fulfilment.

WatchPro: What does the business look like today?

John Kanaras: It’s growing rapidly. I don’t currently have any full-time employees, although I’m looking to hire a few people now. I have an extensive team of freelancers and agency partners that I work with, so we’re still small but growing.

WatchPro: Is it predominantly direct-to-consumer?

John Kanaras: Yes. Around 90% is direct-to-consumer, and then we have a few dropship relationships with notable university partners and companies that have a strong presence in the university space.

WatchPro: Universities seem to be the bread and butter of the business. That must give you a very clearly defined audience.

John Kanaras: Yes, and it’s authentic to why I started the brand. It anchors back to my experience as an athlete and the problem I was trying to solve personally.

Through that journey I realised there was a genuine market opportunity because other people felt similarly.

It isn’t uniquely American, but in the US the affinity people have for their university is on another level. We have university T-shirts, sweatshirts, hats, mugs and pens. We even have university merchandise for our infants and our dogs.

Where you went to school becomes part of your identity and often part of your family history because there are multi-generational dynamics at play.

For us, it was about finding a way to celebrate something important to our customers with a product that is stylish, high quality, elegant and durable.

WatchPro: Let’s talk about the FIFA World Cup. Watch partnerships around the World Cup have traditionally involved companies on the scale of Hublot and LVMH. How did Axia get involved?

John Kanaras: Ours is different from what Hublot has done with the World Cup because we’re a licensee. We’re not the official sponsor or official timekeeper, so it’s a different category.

I talk about having angels on my shoulder throughout this journey. I’ve had a lot of people supporting me, and the FIFA relationship is another example.

It started with the work we did for the College Football Playoff in the US. We were its official timepiece and designed watches for all 12 teams that made the playoffs, plus a separate watch for the champions.

I have a friend and mentor who is very involved in the global football ecosystem. He admired what we had done with the College Football Playoff and asked whether I had considered getting involved in global soccer.

I said I had, but I didn’t really know anybody in that world. He said he knew some people at FIFA and offered to introduce me.

It happened that FIFA was interested. The Hublot relationship had ended and it wanted to add licensed watches to its merchandise category.

FIFA vetted us, looked at the work we had done for the College Football Playoff and carried out its own due diligence. It then came back and said, “Let’s explore this and see if we can make it work for the World Cup.”

With the benefit of hindsight, I probably bit off more than I could chew. Designing all those watches inside six months and delivering them was overwhelming. It was really rewarding as well, but it was the hardest thing I’ve ever done.

WatchPro: And this is the first World Cup with 48 teams rather than 32.

John Kanaras: We actually did only 14 team designs plus one for FIFA, so 15 in total. We didn’t have time to do all 48 and I’m not sure there would necessarily have been a market for every team.

It was a learning process, and we’re now in discussions about coming back next year for the Women’s World Cup in Brazil.

WatchPro: Presumably the FIFA relationship has now taken you deeper into global football. Could you start producing watches for major clubs around the world?

John Kanaras: Conversations have started. There are major football clubs in Spain and the UK where we’ve begun discussions.

But we’re still a small organisation, so for me a lot of this is crawl, walk, run. We want to prove there is interest and a market for something and then scale from there.

We’re definitely interested in exploring football clubs. We haven’t signed any deals yet, but it’s certainly on our radar.

WatchPro: There have been plenty of football and watch collaborations over the years. How do you see Axia as being different?

John Kanaras: I look at it differently. I’m primarily focused on the university segment because it’s authentic to who I am and why I started the business.

For me, watches are about memories and milestones. The watch is a vehicle for those memories. It’s not primarily about precision timekeeping. The quality of the components is table stakes — you have to have a good-quality product and offer value for money — but I’m trying to help people celebrate what’s important to them.

Our designs are very different from most collaborations because they’re ultra-custom.

That prime 12 o’clock real estate that most brands keep for themselves, I give away. I design from a position of empathy: if I were the client, what would I want?

I’d want a watch that celebrates what is important to me. That starts with what occupies the valuable 12 o’clock position, then the colourways, insignia and logos throughout the watch.

You won’t find my logo on many of these dials. On our university designs, for example, my logo is on the counterweight of the seconds hand. It’s very subtle because it isn’t about me. It’s about the client and the memory they want to celebrate.

One thing that surprised me is that our predominant customer is often the gift giver. They’re looking for something memorable that creates a connection with somebody they love; something enduring that reminds the recipient of that relationship.

WatchPro: What sort of price point are we talking about?

John Kanaras: For FIFA, we created a good, better, best structure. At the entry level there was something equivalent to a Swatch at around $200. Then we had an entry-level Swiss-made automatic, and at the top was our Argos, which is our diver-inspired design at around $1,500.

The Argos is by far our bestselling watch. The vast majority of the watches we sell are in the $1,000 to $2,000 range.

FIFA also wanted something for children, so we created the Kosmos. Honestly, I don’t think I’ll do that again. It isn’t really who we are or why we’re designing watches.

We’re creating watches for key moments in people’s lives — memories and things they want to celebrate. A children’s watch has a place, but it isn’t necessarily aligned with what the brand is about.

WatchPro: So what does somebody get for $1,000 to $2,000?

John Kanaras: These are proper mechanical watches. We use 316L stainless steel, DLC coatings and premium elaborate-grade ETA or Sellita movements. There’s rhodium plating, perlage finishing, a custom rotor and an exhibition caseback.

Our bracelets have a proper quick-release mechanism with a pusher rather than squeeze pins, plus a micro-adjusting buckle. We use sapphire crystals with anti-reflective coating, screw-down crowns and offer 300 metres of water resistance on models such as the Argos.

I would say the quality rivals any other entry-level big-name Swiss brand. The finishing is really good and there’s a lot of value for money.

That actually anchors back to the name of the company. Axia is a Greek word. My parents are Greek immigrants and it means “worth” or “value”.

We’re trying to deliver a lot of value for money in the quality of the product, but we’re also trying to design a watch that is worthy of your memories.

There’s a double meaning there. The watch I received at university wasn’t worthy of my memories, and that was my frustration. I’m trying to design watches that are worthy of people’s memories and the moments they represent.

WatchPro: Does FIFA provide a platform for taking that concept global?

John Kanaras: I’ve been fortunate to do deals with some of the premium names in US sport, including the Heisman Trophy and College Football Playoff. It doesn’t get much bigger than that in the college space.

FIFA was a validation that what we’re doing is relevant beyond the US. It has opened us up to a global platform.

We’re certainly interested in renewing with FIFA, assuming everything works out, and global football clubs could be very relevant because the depth of fandom and identity is similar to what we see with universities.

But it goes beyond sport. We do a lot of designs for the armed services in the US and for government agencies. We’ve just been commissioned to produce a watch for the NSA’s 75th anniversary.

These are people who have devoted their lives to government service, and for me it’s an honour to design something for somebody who has devoted so much of their life to that mission.

There are many verticals where this concept can work: sports, universities, government agencies, charities and football clubs. Anywhere there is a deep sense of affiliation and pride can potentially be relevant.

WatchPro: You’re still running a very lean operation. Is that sustainable as the business grows?

John Kanaras: No. I have two people I’ll be hiring shortly, particularly around fulfilment. I simply can’t handle the fulfilment anymore. It has become overwhelming.

We’re also looking at how we can use AI as we scale.

One of the biggest surprises has been the popularity of the custom engraving we offer. On the back of our watches we have an exhibition caseback with a movement holder that is colour-matched to the client. On that movement holder we have space for up to 80 characters of engraving.

While we’ve been small, it has been almost a concierge service. Customers ask me what they should engrave and we end up having a text conversation about it. I’ll lay it out in the software, take a screenshot and text it back to them.

That obviously isn’t scalable.

We’re now building an AI agent to help customers work out what the perfect engraving should be. We’ve also added an engraving visualiser to the website, so customers can type in their message and immediately see how it will look on the back of the watch.

It takes something from being simply a nice present to being a meaningful gift. That expression from the gift giver becomes personalised and turns it into a genuinely one-of-a-kind watch.

The challenge is finding ways to use technology so we can scale the business while preserving that depth of customer experience.

WatchPro: Finally, how much of what you learned running a pharmaceutical business are you bringing into Axia?

John Kanaras: Everything. It was a great training ground, not only from a sales and marketing perspective but, more importantly, for supply-chain management, demand planning and building flexibility into the supply chain.

If you go onto our website, you’ll see lots of different Argos watches for different institutions, whether that’s the Secret Service, University of Michigan or FIFA.

They’re all based around the same bracelet and case. What changes is the dial, the logo on the crown, the logo on the rotor and other details.

That creates a lot of supply-chain efficiency. We have a core design that can be customised according to the needs of each client.

Our SKU count might therefore be heavy on dials, but it isn’t heavy on cases and bracelets. That gives us the flexibility to create highly customised watches while still operating efficiently as we grow.