Paramo Extends Its Instore Offering With Elliot Brown Watches

Ethical outdoor clothing brand Páramo has opened its doors to British watch brand Elliot Brown with the introduction of a Special Edition Mountain Rescue Canford Watch which supports MREW Charity now sold in all three of its stores covering London, Keswick and Páramo’s hometown of Wadhurst. 

For over 25 years Páramo has been the brand of choice and leading supplier of weather protection for UK Mountain Rescue teams, English Nature, Specialist Teams within the Rescue Services, UK Armed Forces Adventure Training Instructors and recommended by the UK National Search and Rescue Dog Association. The sentiment to support those who selflessly keep the outdoors safe and enjoyable is shared by award-winning Elliot Brown Watches, a British brand that has raised an impressive £21,000 over the years for Mountain Rescue England & Wales (MREW) through sales of its special edition Canford watch since its launch in 2015. 

Elliot Brown’s MREW Canford watch is a reliable and robust timepiece that easily meets the criteria of a watch required on the MREW member’s kit list. Retailing at £385, 10% of the sale of each watch is donated to MREW. In addition, both brands offer generous discounts to mountain rescue team members. On confirmation of full membership Elliot Brown offers a £100 discount via this link and Páramo’s Mountain Professional Scheme offers 20% off RRP of Páramo products and a further 10% back in loyalty points to spend on future purchases.

Head of Sales at Páramo, Tom Snee, comments: “We are delighted to collaborate with the team at Elliot Brown Watches. As a company we are very select about who we work with and the brands we stock in our stores in order to ensure that we are offering our customers quality products that align with our brand values. Both Páramo and Elliot Brown are like-minded British brands that share a passion for the outdoors, a willingness to help those who help others and an innate understanding of quality. In all three Páramo stores there’s an eye-catching POS that has been designed and supplied by Elliot Brown that showcases the Canford watch. We’re excited to learn how our customers respond to this offering in our stores and look forward to developing further initiatives with the team at Elliot Brown.”

Back in 2015 Elliot Brown approached MREW with memories of a successful watch collaboration with SaS the water clean-up charity in a previous life.  The recipe of a beautifully considered special edition watch and a generous charitable donation proved to be a virtuous one and something they felt could be really rewarding.   

They met with MREW, threw some watches around and shared how they construct our watches differently. At the following MREW board meeting, the decision was unanimous that a collaboration should be explored.

Mountain Rescue teams are all volunteers who set out in all conditions and often at the most inconvenient time such as a Family Christmas to rescue those in difficulty. It was exactly such a call out that left such a lasting impression with Co-founder Alex Brown having witnessed a rescue on Cumbrian TV as a teenager one Christmas.

Elliot Brown set about designing this first EB collaborative project with discretion and empathy, putting ourselves into the shoes of team members.  The design needed to be subtle so that those in the know, would recognise the watch and those with no connection wouldn’t. No obvious logo on the dial but instead a subtle embossed black on black imprint of the MREW cross and mountain emblem only visible in the right lighting.

Elliot Brown are into the second iteration of the MREW Special Edition and they’ve been able to incorporate a number of functional enhancements that lift the watch to a higher professional specification including larger hour batons, oversized 12h timing bezel marker marked out in red, and an anti-reflective sapphire crystal.

As reliable workhorses go, it doesn’t get much better than this special edition watch and from the sale of every one, they donate £36 towards vital kit and equipment for the volunteers.  They have already donated many £1000’s and in addition there’s a very handsome discount scheme for team members (get in touch here if you’re a team member and please include proof of membership).  Every watch comes with two highly functional straps and single sided screw in strap bars with socket tool that locks into the end of the bars to make strap changes fast and easy.

Elliot Brown is so proud to be a key supporter of the charity.  They didn’t start the business to become philanthropic but with this and so many other projects under their belt, (all generating funds for deserving causes), it’s definitely become a big part of what Elliot Brown is.