Akteo watch company

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koimaster
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Akteo watch company

Post by koimaster » February 13th 2017, 10:36am

AKTEO is a French watchmaking company from Besançon, a city near the Swiss border whose important watch making industry had fallen victim to the Asian quartz expansion in the seventies. Attempts to return at least part of the lost watchmaker cake followed in the early nineties when French designer Jean–Christophe Mareschal introduced more than a hundred motives in a series called Taboo – Taboo on topic of Professions, hobbies and passions. Many colorful, cute and cheeky designs were placed on dials which expressed the imagination and playfulness of their designers. Computer technology made it possible to cut the little details and enable their coloring. Some of the professions that have been places on the dials have been a hairdresser, carpenter, dentist, designer, lawyer; each represented with utensils and tools necessary to perform certain activities. These interesting and imaginative objects were not mere decoration, or a pun, but they also had the function of being hands of the watch. Akteo Design J. C. Mareschal was registered in 1997 at the World Intellectual Property Organization.

The Akteo company has been partner of important cultural events such as Cannes Film Festival and various music festivals, launching for each occasion original models in limited edition. Akteo watches could be found in the collections of Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, in MoMA in New York and San Francisco, in Japan - Museum of Modern Art, Saitama and Pola Museum of Art, Hakone, and, finally in the Museum of Arts and Crafts, Zagreb.

Today Akteo has more than 300 models divided into several thematic sections – Art, Life's Sensations, Professions, Sports, Nature, Civilization, Time. When marketing their products it is always stressed that they are French made, made of stainless steel or titanium, dial protected with mineral glass, equipped with quality quartz movement, water resistant to 50 m depth and that they have two year's warranty. Nevertheless, it must be mentioned that watches are not entirely made in France– they have Swiss movements; most oftenRonda calibers, with some exceptions (e.g. ISA in the ladies watch cat. no. 10).


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Re: Akteo watch company

Post by dlgdogwood » February 27th 2022, 10:39am

My husband bought me a Taboo Taboo watch while we were on vacation in the Caribbean
around 30 years ago. The watch features a girl in a bathing suit. Her legs are used as the
watch dials. I love this watch - wear it almost every day. I just brought it into my jeweler to
get a battery and they told me that it's rusted inside and has seen its day;-( Do you know where
I can purchase a new one? Many thanks, Donna
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Re: Akteo watch company

Post by svaglic » February 27th 2022, 6:14pm

Is it possible to get one with a similar case and switch out dials?

I saw this one, but it sold a year ago, so they are out there just hard to find.
https://www.carousell.com.hk/p/paris-ta ... 005734853/

Would it work to get this
https://www.ebay.com/itm/265062289106?h ... SwOZJgMpMp
Take it in and have them switch out the dial and hands?
In memory of TB/Phfluff, since he isn’t here to continue to give his praise, I will share it for him.
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Re: Akteo watch company

Post by wavelet » June 1st 2024, 9:39am

I know this is 2 years after the OP's original post, but in case it helps other folks, several points:
1) Taboo Taboo isn't an Akteo watch model, it's an entire series (was very common in Japan)
2) I believe the watch model the OP mentions is called the "swimmer" or "diver" watch, as pictured here:
https://www.etsy.com/sg-en/listing/1282 ... iver-watch
3) Akteo went bankrupt in the early 2000s, so finding new ones is quite uncommon.
4) All Akteo watches use standard-sized Swiss quartz movements; I've had them replaced on several of mine, and if the watch is externally in reasonable condition, this would be the best and cheapest solution (any watch jeweler locally should be able to do it for $25-$30, using a high-quality Japanese movement, or a little more for Swiss). A small number of models need slightly thinner mechanisms, but those are also readily available.
5) Otherwise, during the past 2 years, I've seen the Swimmer model twice on sale on eBay, and once on the Japanese aggregation site Buyee.jp, at reasonable prices (US$40-$50 for a working watch in good cosmetic condition)

I collect Akteo watches, now have ~80; they have an amazing number of models, in the high 100s, all designed by the same designer, J. C. Mareschal. They also made limited-edition watches for specific organizations and companies (e.g., anyone buying a certain model of Z-series BMW convertible got one, and every member of a local German electricians' union). There were also models only sold in one country, e.g. a cherry blossom design sold in Japan.
Note that if you see a watch with the same offset crown (at 4 O\clock) and ingenious dial design but that says "AKTO" and not "AKTEO", it's the same company & designer, not a fake; the company changed its name after a few years of operation when they found out "AKTO" was alreayd being used by another company unrelated to watches.
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