The Geckota name
We're often asked about the company name, where did it come from, and what does it mean? And do I have to like geckos if I buy one of your watches? Read on to find out more about the history of the company and how the name came about.
My name is Jonathan Quinn and I am a self confessed watch geek. I love watches and I always have done. It was my hobby for many years before I had the opportunity to turn this interest into a business. For the past 20 years I have spent many hours buying, selling, photographing and researching watches. I'm married with 2 children and my wife would say I was “watch geeking” when I was doing anything related to this hobby. For some reason “watch geeking” turned into “watch geckoing” and she would say "oh, watch geckoing again are you?" when I was doing anything watch related. This is several years ago, and before I seriously considered giving up my job as an engineer to start my own business. But when the time came, and I needed a name for my new business, I chose “The Watch Gecko”, but soon dropped the “The” and registered the domain "watchgecko.com" in January 2010.
For the first year or so I was “Jonathan Quinn trading as WatchGecko” but as the business grew I wanted to expand and take on staff, so I needed to form a limited company. I didn’t want the company name to be WatchGecko Limited as we had already started using some other brand names that I had created. At that point I wasn’t entirely sure the direction that the business would go in and wanted the “WatchGecko” name to sit as a brand under the company name. So I needed to think of a name.
My plan was for the company to sit in the background and then have various brand names that would be used for the products. I thought having a subtle link to the original “WatchGecko” name would be nice and did some research on geckos. I am not interested in animals really and have no real interest in geckos to be honest. But anyway I found that geckos are part of an animal family named "Gekkota". I liked the family tree idea and thought this fitted well with the company being at the top and the brand names being further down the hierarchy. So I changed the spelling a bit, and after filling in some forms, in May 2012 the name Geckota Limited was registered at companies house.
Initially all of our products were unbranded watch straps, and as most people don’t notice the brand on a strap this wasn’t an issue. But watches are very different and when we started designing these, we knew that we needed to put a name on them. We didn’t have another brand name so chose to put Geckota on them with the intention of creating another name for the watches further down the line. But as time went on, the range and the brand has become bigger and more established, and we stuck with the original name.
The Geckota company
The business has grown steadily over the past few years and we now employ around 20 staff who are all based from our office here in Tewkesbury. We have several brand names and websites now, the biggest and most established is still WatchGecko and we do still trade on ebay, where this adventure originally started all those years ago.
Geckota is the company name and our main brand for our products, watches and replacement watch straps. Our range of watch straps are for the most part, designed to be general replacements for any brand of watch.
WatchGecko is our main retail website. We sell our own range of products on there as well as some other brands. This is also where we like to write about the industry and other things that we enjoy. The blog section on WatchGecko mainly focused on writing about new watch releases and gives us a space to showcase our range of replacement watch straps on watches that we do not stock.
ZULUDIVER is an outdoors and adventure themed brand. Primarily offering NATO style and rubber diver's watch straps, this range of products are perfect for your next adventure. In addition to this we are currently working on a new brand that builds on our connections and interest in motorsport. We have been involved with motorsport for several years now and have sponsored drivers and have worked with them to produce limited edition watches to help celebrate their success.
As of 2021 we have launched 2 new brands, FORZO Watches and StrapJunkie.
