Supermodel Lily Cole’s business is on the brink of collapse 12 years after it drew criticism for taking £200,000 of taxpayer cash.
Cambridge graduate Ms Cole, 37, has admitted feeling ‘less of an activist right now’, having set up the gift-exchange website Impossible in 2013.
The site allowed people to post ‘wishes’ for the services or objects they needed – such as dog-walking or household items – and for others in their community to fulfil those requests for free.
Despite Ms Cole’s fortune then being estimated at £7million, the firm – described as a ‘cash machine that printed wishes’ – was handed government backing from a now-defunct fund administered by innovation quango Nesta, a move that was described at the time by campaigners and politicians as ‘utterly absurd’.
Impossible also received funding from Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales and toured the US as an example of the best of British business.
But The Mail on Sunday can reveal that the not-for-profit firm, registered under the name I Am Possible Ltd, was last week served with a compulsory strike-off notice by Companies House. It will be closed within two months.
The last accounts, filed in October 2024, reveal the company was £64,000 in the red, had no staff and a little over £400 in assets.
The news comes after Ms Cole revealed she had a ‘crisis moment’ where she realised her ‘more activist instincts’ had turned her into a ‘business person’.
Speaking to the Conversations With The Lissome podcast last month, she said: ‘Everything felt very heavy and serious and businessy, and I realised I didn’t want to be a business person, I didn’t want to manage companies.’
Ms Cole, who has fronted campaigns for Chanel, Hermes and Prada, set up Impossible as an antidote to the 2008 financial crash.
Requests could include anything from needing a ladder, to services such as collecting shopping.
People could then choose to fulfil those wishes for free.
But by 2016 the firm had racked up annual losses of more than £250,000.
On her website, an undated statement from Ms Cole says: ‘After operating for several years and serving over 100,000 users around the planet, the platform is now closed.’
