Massena LAB
Brand History
William Massena is one of the best-known figures in the online watch community: a collector since his teenage years in Geneva, he worked as a dealer in Miami and New York, served as Chief Operating Officer of the Antiquorum auction house in Geneva and, from 2005 to 2020, ran the TimeZone forum, helping make it one of the leading platforms for independent watchmaking enthusiasts worldwide — a path as a critic, often an outspoken one, well before becoming a producer.
The seed of Massena LAB was planted in 2014, when Massena involved the Austrian watchmakers Habring² in creating a chronograph for TimeZone's twentieth anniversary: the Habring² Chrono COS TZ20, launched in November 2015, demonstrated strong collector interest in limited-run independent projects with vintage inspiration. From that success, in 2018, the Massena LAB brand itself was born, conceived as a "creative outlet" for working with some of the most interesting independent watchmakers on the contemporary scene.
The name LAB sums up three concepts stated by the brand: laboratory, label and collaboration. Massena LAB does not present itself as a traditional manufacture, but as a creative studio that proposes to established watch houses and independent masters concepts that step outside their usual catalogs, often reinterpreting historical references — vintage chronographs, but also the aesthetic of dials and counters borrowed from the world of motor racing and vintage motorsport — with a contemporary eye and engineering.
Consistent with this creative-studio approach rather than an industrial one, the brand has adopted a limited-drop sales model from the start: small production runs, often between 99 and 200 pieces, announced and sold directly to collectors through its own website, with no traditional distribution network. The first major success in this vein is the ERWIN LAB01, made with Habring², sold out within hours of its 2020 launch. In subsequent years the list of collaborations has grown to more than fifteen names — including Raúl Pagès, Vianney Halter, H. Moser & Cie., MB&F, Louis Erard, Luca Soprana and Unimatic — and in 2024 the chronograph signed with Sylvain Pinaud won the Chronograph Watch Prize at the Grand Prix d'Horlogerie de Genève.
