About Aumax
A small Johannesburg workshop that makes things personal.
Aumax is a youth-owned South African business. Every piece we sell is personalised here on our own laser machines, and alongside the watches we bring in, we design and build a range of our own.
What we actually do
The personalisation is never outsourced. That part is always ours.
Plenty of shops will sell you a watch. Very few will put your wife's name on the dial while you wait. Personalisation is the business. The engraving, the photo etching, the name on the case back, all of it happens on our own machines, in our own workshop, by us.
We'll be straight about the rest. Some of the watches we sell are models we source and select, classic and Arabic-dial pieces with quality movements we've tested and stand behind, which we then personalise here. Others are entirely our own: dials we draw, laser-cut, polish and assemble in-house, designed around Zulu and Sotho motifs and made from locally sourced materials.
Our orders run through a WhatsApp ordering system and a production dashboard we built ourselves. It's a small operation run with good tools, which is the only way one workshop competes with an import shelf.
The personalisation
Every name, message and photo is engraved in-house on our own lasers. No third party ever touches your piece.
The heritage range
Watches we design from nothing, with dials laser-cut from local stock, polished by hand and assembled here, drawn from Zulu and Sotho motifs.
Sourced models
The wider catalogue is movements and cases we choose, test and back with a one-year warranty, then personalise for you.
In the workshop
How we build our own range.
Five steps, all of them here. A sourced watch skips the first four and joins at the last one.
Design
Motifs drawn as vector paths, the same file the laser will follow.
Laser-cut
The dial is cut from local stock on our own machine, not ordered in.
Polish
Every dial is finished by hand in the workshop before it goes further.
Assemble
Movement, case, hands and strap built up and tested here.
Engrave
Your name, message or photo, added last, to order, while you wait.
Step 05 applies to every piece we sell, whether we cut the dial or selected it.
Why we do it this way
Young people should be making things, not only selling them.
Aumax was started in 2024 by Sakhile Simanga Maseko, a self-taught software engineer who learned precision manufacturing because nobody was going to do it for him. It is a youth-owned business and still a very small one.
In 2026 Rethabile Ndaba joined as co-founder when we opened the Kya Sands studio. Rethabile runs the studio day to day: engraving, finishing and packing your order, and looking after the customers who come in to collect.
South Africa's youth unemployment problem is not solved by more retail jobs. It is solved by young people learning to operate machines, finish a product and run a production floor, skills that hold their value and that nobody can take back.
That is what the workshop is for. Every piece of equipment we add is a step toward a real trade being taught here: laser operation, finishing, quality control, and the commercial side of dealing with corporate customers. It is slower than importing finished goods and reselling them. It is also the only version of this business worth building.
We've had a little outside help along the way: a place on Orange Corners, an entrepreneurship programme funded by the Government of the Netherlands, and support from the Craft and Design Institute.
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On the record
Who you're actually buying from.
A registered South African company, not a page that disappears after the festive season.
Personalised in Johannesburg
Bring us a name. Leave with a gift.
Come and see the workshop at Kya Sands, order online, or message us and we'll bring it to your door.