Young watchmaker Michael Kobold always wears one of his own watches on each wrist, yet he's still a quarter-hour late to lunch, and though he celebrated his 28th birthday the night before, a hangover is not the holdup. (A teetotaler, he passed the evening with em star James Gandolfini, a friend and client, who baked him a red velvet cake with a watch face on top.) It's the weather. On a rainy Manhattan weekday, cabs are scarce, and Kobold has a strict aversion to underground trains—just one among the many eccentricities of a man who combines the hardy air of an Eagle Scout with the inexplicable quirks of a math professor.
On his right hand is a Kobold Polar Surveyor, his first big success. It's an Arctic survival tool as much as a striking timepiece, with its Swiss-made movements modified to exotic ends and an assertive elegance that nods to the Bauhaus. The stylistic reference is also evident on, well, the other hand. "I usually wear our latest watch on my left wrist," Kobold says, showing off a prototype of a piece to be sold with Range Rovers. "They're not classically beautiful, but rugged," he ventures. "Not like Keira Knightley, but…who was the girl in the boxing movie?"
The Hilary Swank of watches has gained a following among not only adventurers and divers but also military officers and beat cops with deep savings accounts: There's a definite affinity between Kobold and men in uniform. The company is embarking on a project for the Navy Seals—also the namesake of its new Soarway Diver Seal, an oversize number designed with Gandolfini—while the man himself speaks of moonlighting as a tactical-driving instructor. And then there was the 2002 incident in which Kobold was arrested after presenting a law-enforcement badge to airport security. "Long story," he says, proceeding to give an account, quite long indeed, that ends with an appeal to the Supreme Court.
Born into a family of wealthy German industrialists, Kobold grew up in both Frankfurt and the U.S. He was tinkering with gears in adolescence and informally apprenticing at 16. Three years later, he launched his company while an undergradu-ate at Carnegie Mellon. He's still living in the same off-campus apartment in Pittsburgh, where his workshop sits across the street from an artisanal bakery. "I'm constantly worried about being poor," he says, explaining that he gave the bakery owners one watch each and that he and his COO now go over every day for a loaf or two. "We made a deal: a lifetime supply of watches for a lifetime supply of bread."—TROY PATTERSON
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