Worn & Wound
Raging Against the Machine in Talkeetna, Alaska: The Impossible Watch Company
Impossible Watch Company, based in Talkeetna, Alaska, has a name with a double meaning. Chris, the owner of the brand, told me he called it “Impossible” because it seemed like such a tall task for a watch industry outsider to get a brand off the ground. “I had to jump through so many hoops,” he said, referring to the start-up process and the various logistical challenges he faced when starting the company. And Chris has other irons in the fire besides his watch brand – he’s an old school entrepreneur with hugely varied interests, making Impossible Watch Company (IMP for short) even more of a challenge. And yet, here he is, with a growing following on Instagram, and a website full of sold out listings. As a friend pointed out to him after the brand started to gain some traction, the name works in the case of success too: “I M Possible.” On the one hand, IMP is not unlike a whole bunch of other small, independently run brands. It’s a one man operation, and the watches have a vintage inspired aesthetic that will naturally garner comparisons to those made by Furlan Marri, Baltic, and others. But look closer, and there’s something else happening here, something equal parts compelling (in terms of the watchmaking) and subversive. Sure, there’s a sector dial chronograph in the collection that on the surface has some fairly obvious similarities to watches made by those brands mentioned above. But there are also time only watches with sterile stone dials. An...
