The business incubator is coming to the watch bench with Ateliers Associés, a new venture promising business support, infrastructure, industry know-how, and contacts for independent watchmakers and young brands. The incubator is the brainchild of industry veterans William Massena of Massena LAB and Louis Westphalen-Lemaitre, a former Hodinkee staffer and most recently responsible for brand development and marketing at LVMH’s Gérald Genta and Daniel Roth revivals.
William Massena
Business incubators, which provide capital, office and manufacturing facilities as well as corporate services and guidance to start-ups in return for a stake in the young companies they back, have been around for more than half a century. They have thrived in the technology, specialized manufacturing, and biotech sectors by backing innovative ideas and business plans. There have also been high-profile failures, particularly in the so-called dot.com era of the late 1990s and early 2000s, as a surge of internet startups joined with tech incubators to raise capital only to collapse in short order.
Now, as interest in independent watchmakers grows into an increasingly significant part of the watch industry, with scores of young watchmakers seeking to produce their own projects, Massena and Westphalen-Lemaitre are betting the incubator concept can be applied to horology, with hopes of building the next generation of independent watchmaking businesses and brands.
Louis Westphalen-Lemaitre.
Photo courtesy Ateliers Associés
Massena tells Hodinkee that Ateliers Associés has raised about CHF 1.5 million in initial funding between the founders and a handful of investors. The plan is to raise about CHF 5 million in total initial funding from collectors and investors who would receive priority access to watches produced by the watchmakers backed by the venture. Investors could include family offices and strategic industry partners, including manufacturers, retailers, and auction houses, Massena says.
Ateliers Associés will take minority equity stakes of up to 30% in independent watchmakers’ projects, but won’t seek majority control, Massena says. The plan is to support as many as four independent watchmakers and projects per year, building on the group’s combined business resources and knowledge.
Watchmakers at Nomos, an independent brand in Glashütte, Germany started in the 1990s.
The first project supported by Atelier Associés will be French watchmaker Mickaël Gaspar’s Souscription watch. With a unique movement conceived and designed by the watchmaker, featuring a moving dial below the movement and a retrograde date, the 29-year-old has spent a decade developing the concept. Now backed by Atelier Associés, full details of the Souscription will be revealed in Singapore on November 12 during IAMWATCH, with an expected twenty pieces to be produced and delivered by the watchmaker.
“Each of us has a talent. Mickaël’s is the watch and ours is everything around it,” Massena says in a statement.
Atelier Associés will take on three more projects to be unveiled in 2027, including an “unexpected” collaboration and a watch and brand entirely conceived and produced by women. The incubator will fund each project’s first prototype and provide an operational team to guide development from drawing to production. It says an established independent watchmaker will join each year to mentor the projects in the group.
Mickaël Gaspar.
Photo courtesy Ateliers Associés
While young watchmaker talents have long been recognized and supported through competitions and prizes such as the F.P. Journe Young Talent Competition and luxury groups have begun celebrating independents through initiatives like the Louis Vuitton Watch Prize, the new watchmaking incubator says its unique structure will be positioned to support the next generation of independent watchmakers throughout the lengthy development process from concept to production and marketing and sales.
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