Impossible Project

History

The Impossible Project was founded in 2008 after Polaroid announced in February 2008 that it would stop producing film for Polaroid cameras. The founders are Dr. Florian Kaps, André Bosman and Marwan Saba. In June 2008, Kaps and Bosman met at the Polaroid factory’s closing event and decided to found a company to produce materials for Polaroid cameras. In October 2008, Impossible bought the production machinery from Polaroid for $3.1 million dollars and leased a building, called Building Noord, which was formerly part of the Polaroid plant in Enschede, Netherlands. The company has offices in Vienna, Berlin, New York and Tokyo. It leased the Polaroid production plant and developed new instant film products for use in some existing Polaroid cameras, beginning mass production and sales in 2010. They generated USD270,000 in profit on USD4 million in revenue and sold 500,000+ units.

In January 2012, the company announced that it and Polaroid would launch a range of collectible products, called The Polaroid Classic range, that originate from different periods of Polaroid's history. Between six and ten products will be released each year. In July 2013, Florian Kaps announced his 'retirement' from the project and Creed O'Hanlon took over the role as CEO.

In December 2014, The Impossible Project announced that Oskar Smolokowski would be their new CEO and Creed O'Hanlon would become the Executive Chairman of Impossible's management board.

Impossible has licensed its name to stores in Germany, Spain and London.

Future and other formats

The Impossible Project has stated that they cannot produce 4x5, Type 100, or Type 80 films, Polaroid 500 film and I-Zone film even if they wanted as they do not have the production machinery. These were disassembled along with the factories that used to produce the film when Polaroid filed for Chapter 11.

They have said that after Fuji discontinued FP3000b and FP100b they had periodic discussions with them and others in the industry about popular formats that are at risk. They have approached Fuji on this (regarding purchasing their machinery) and have yet to receive a solid response. They have stated their preference to focus on doing a limited number of things very well, so their focus is Integral rather than peel away (although they offer a 8x10 peel away solution).

Instant Lab

In October 2013, the company began sale of the Instant Lab, a new camera-like device that could expose digital images from an iPhone onto analog instant film. It supports the iPhone 4, 4s, 5, 5c and 5s, as well as the iPod Touch.

The device was produced after a successful crowd-funding campaign on Kickstarter. It also introduced a new battery-less film cartridge design for use with the Instant Lab, which–unlike vintage Polaroid cameras–is internally powered.

The cartridge itself is a 600-type cartridge stripped of the battery, so that it can use 600-type film.

Customers will have the opportunity to exchange their current Instant Lab cradle for a new one that supports many phone sizes in one.

Instant Lab 2.0

In September 2014, The Impossible Project announced at Photokina that they would release a second generation device.

The biggest, if only, change appears to be that it now supports more than iPhone 4 through 5s as iPod Touch 4 and 5. iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus will be supported along with iPad with Retina Display, the Samsung Galaxy S III through S5, and Galaxy Note II and 3.

Impossible I-Type

In 2016, Impossible started manufacturing its own instant camera, the Impossible I-Type.