Inside Vienna’s historic Church Street is an odd store. A beautiful wooden building with exceptional woodwork and a hint of mystery to it. This is the Vienna Clock Shop, a family owned business that opened in 1975, and is coming up on 50 years of service. 

Stepping inside this intriguing building you are greeted by a whirlwind of clocks, each one a different size and shape altogether producing a symphony of bells and whistles. Right up the stairs, you get to Donny Sobel’s workbench, covered in thousands of different tools used to craft custom pieces to repair all the different clocks around Vienna.

Heading back downstairs we find the owners of the Clock Shop, the Sobel Family. Donny Sobel, the shop owner, his wife, sister and their cat. Sobel’s father had a business selling clock parts to different clock companies. That set off something in Sobel, and inspired him to create a repair shop that could successfully do all this. While Sobel had raw talent, he needed to find a mentor in the clock industry to perfect his skills, he found Tony Sugguto, a retired watchmaker, and the two started up the Vienna Clock Shop. Vienna had a previous clock shop that was shutting down, so Sobel and Sugguto rushed in and got right to work. 

“In this business, knowing how to be mechanically proficient, I had a leg up, knowing how to do clocks perfectly,” Sobel said. “I needed some help, so a family friend, named Tony Sugguto, who was retiring from his watch making business, agreed to come aboard and help teach me finesse”

Now, the Clock Shop has become a big tank in the clock world, with an order backlog of one and a half years.

“Some clocks take two minutes to fix, and the one I’ve been working on has been on my desk for two weeks, but you’re talking about $3 versus $5,000,” Sobel said. 

The clock Sobel is currently working on is from the 1700s, with many others just as old on his desk. Sobel has worked on over 10,000 different timepieces, with repairs and restorations being about 70% of the business. His wife mostly runs the sales and bookings of his customers, while he does most of the repairing. They all come together as a family to help create and foster a successful clock business.

Sobel has great pride in his work and takes his time with the pieces. Sobel doesn’t just want to make the clock work again, but restore it back to factory condition. 

“We feel bad when a company lowers the quality of the product we sell, we take it personally,” said Sobel.

The Clock Shop is a staple piece of Vienna’s history, and while the clock industry may be slowing down, the Clock Shop of Vienna has yet to do so.