Nick Pelios
Freediver, Creator
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Nick Pelios
Freediver, Creator
There was a morning, years ago, when I opened my laptop and felt a strange kind of heaviness. It was late November. The skies in Athens were gray. The season already carried a quietness that made you slow down whether you wanted to or not. I clicked into my inbox and watched the messages load one after another. Hundreds of them. All Black Friday. All urgent. All insisting that the world was about to run out of things unless I bought them right now.
The pressure was ridiculous. It pushed and pulled at something inside me. I remember thinking that this could not be the way we were meant to move through the world. Not in a panic. Not in a frenzy. Not through a haze of pressure shaped by discounts that only looked like gifts but felt more like manipulation.
I closed the laptop and walked outside. The air was cold. There was no noise, no rush, no countdown clock ticking above my head. That short walk felt cleaner than anything the digital world was promising. I did not have the language back then to articulate what felt wrong. I only knew that something in the ritual of Black Friday was fundamentally disconnected from the life I wanted to live.
It took years before I understood what that feeling was trying to say.
Black Friday has a way of crawling under your skin. It tells you that value is temporary. That happiness expires. That your worth as a consumer is determined by how quickly you react. It sells urgency as though it were truth. Yet the urgency is artificial, engineered, designed to convert not through clarity but through pressure.
There is something unsettling about a world that trains us to move at the pace of sales rather than the pace of need. Something unsettling about convincing people that a product loses value because a new version appeared on a screen. Something unsettling about how normal we have made this cycle of desire and discard.
I see it now for what it is. A system that wants you to spend more, not because you need more, but because the machine survives only if you keep feeding it. A system that hides the cost of excess behind attractive typefaces and red banners. A system that pretends it is doing you a favor by lowering a price while quietly raising the stakes everywhere else.
We lose more than money in this cycle. We lose the ability to recognize what enough feels like. We lose the clarity that comes with restraint. We lose the connection between our choices and the world they affect.
This is the part no one talks about because it gets in the way of the celebration.
Every year, during Black Friday weekend, the world produces an avalanche of stuff that is not needed. Warehouses overflow. Trucks run nonstop. Delivery systems tremble under the load. Returns pile up. Most of the returned items will never be resold. It costs more to inspect them than to throw them away.
We know where this ends. In landfills. In oceans. In rivers. In the stomachs of animals that never had a choice. Microplastics spread into places we once believed were untouched. The cycle repeats. More extraction. More waste. More damage.
This is not an abstract story. It is a physical reality made from the materials of our decisions. Every cheap product has a cost someone pays. Every throwaway purchase has a footprint that does not vanish when the excitement fades.
Sometimes I wonder what our ancestors would think if they could see the way we live now. How we mine mountains for devices we replace every two years. How we wrap single items in multiple layers of plastic. How we celebrate a day dedicated to buying things we often do not need.
I imagine they would be shocked by how normal it all feels to us.
I have worked long enough in an industry that makes products to understand the fine line between genuine need and artificial desire. Real need comes from use. It comes from experience. It comes from the wear and tear of life. Manufactured desire comes from the story we tell around an object. One is rooted in function. The other in persuasion.
Alchemy was not built to feed desire. It was built to solve real problems for people who move through the water with intention. When we design something, we do not ask how fast it can sell. We ask how long it can last. We ask how much waste we can avoid. We ask how many years of use a diver can get out of it before needing anything else.
Those questions do not belong in the world of Black Friday. They slow you down. They force you to think. They push you toward quality instead of quantity. They ask you to consider what you already own and whether you truly require something new.
This approach makes us the opposite of what Black Friday celebrates, which is why our stance has always been simple. We do not participate. We never have. We never will.
Not because we want to be different. Not because it is a marketing angle. But because participating would betray the values that brought the company to life in the first place.
Every November, messages arrive asking whether we will do a discount. Some people expect it. Others demand it. Some even get angry when we politely decline.
There is a strange pressure in saying no when the world around you is shouting yes. You feel it in conversations. You feel it in numbers. You feel it when you look around at companies cutting prices simply to join the noise. You begin to question whether you are being stubborn or whether you are holding onto something important.
Every year we choose to hold on.
For us, saying no is not about the short term. It is about the kind of company we want to be ten years from now. A company that stands for longevity. A company that prioritizes ethics over hype. A company that refuses to participate in a system that encourages mindless consumption and accelerates waste.
There is a kind of relief in standing firmly in your values. A kind of groundedness that reminds you why you started in the first place. A reminder that business does not have to feed the cycle of overconsumption to survive. It can choose a different path. It can push back. It can teach consumers to slow down rather than speed up.
The problem with Black Friday is not the discounts. It is the mindset it reinforces. The belief that every object has a short lifespan. The belief that new is inherently better. The belief that happiness comes from acquiring rather than experiencing.
We lose something very real when we allow that mindset to guide us. We lose patience. We lose discernment. We lose the skill of caring for what we already own. We lose the deep satisfaction that comes from repairing, maintaining, and using things for years.
Some of the most meaningful gear I have ever owned was not new. It carried the marks of time. Scratches. Dents. Worn textures. Sunlight fading on the surface. Signs of life etched into every corner. There was honesty in that. Those objects held stories instead of novelty. They reminded me that value is not built by the market. It is built by experience.
Black Friday has no room for that kind of relationship. It wants you to forget the old quickly so that you can buy the next thing. It teaches us to look away from the deeper meaning of durability. It trains us to treat objects as transitional instead of lasting.
I believe the world would be more balanced if we shifted our focus back toward longevity. If we learned to trust our possessions rather than replace them. If we stopped celebrating consumption and started celebrating care.
One of the hardest truths we avoid is that waste does not happen by accident. It is chosen. It is designed. It is built into the lifecycle of products that are meant to be temporary. When companies prioritize low cost and rapid turnover, they create items destined to end up in landfills.
Brands that participate in Black Friday are often the same brands that design for short life spans. High volume. Thin margins. Fast replacements. It is a cycle that depends on consumers who feel pressured to buy quickly and replace frequently.
We choose to operate differently. Our fins begin with carbon sheets we treat with respect. Our manufacturing lines operate with precision. We cure, we test, we push, we refine. We slow the process down intentionally because cutting corners for speed leads to failures that turn into waste.
Refusing to take part in Black Friday reinforces that choice. It reminds us that durability is our responsibility. That quality is our strongest statement. That if our products are built to last, we owe it to the world not to encourage unnecessary buying.
In many ways, sustainability is not a feature. It is a mindset, a discipline, a commitment to leaving a lighter footprint even when the market tempts you to do the opposite.
There is a quiet courage in deciding that what you have is enough. It pushes against an entire industry built on the belief that you must always want more. It is not glamorous. It does not get applause. But it is powerful.
Living with enough teaches you to appreciate the things that accompany you through life. It teaches you to value craftsmanship over novelty. It teaches you to resist the pressure to upgrade because others are upgrading. It teaches you to define your own rhythm.
Most importantly, it teaches you that your worth is not tied to how much you buy.
I believe this lesson is becoming more important every year. The world is warming. Resources are shrinking. Wildlife is disappearing. We cannot solve these problems with recycling campaigns or optimistic slogans alone. We need to consume less. We need to choose better. We need to honor the materials that become part of our lives.
Participating in Black Friday would betray that truth. Abstaining from it reinforces the idea that enough is not only possible but meaningful.
We often talk about changing the industry, but change does not begin with grand gestures. It begins with small, stubborn decisions. It begins with the refusal to participate in something that feels wrong. It begins with the courage to say there is another way to do business.
The future of responsible manufacturing will come from companies that build fewer products with greater care. From customers who buy less but buy well. From communities that pride themselves not on consumption but on stewardship.
It will come from the growing realization that joy lives in the use of things, not the accumulation of them. That meaning comes from connection, not acquisition. That the things we keep close to us should be chosen with intention.
Black Friday teaches us to take more. The planet needs us to take less.
We are choosing the planet.
That is why we stay out of Black Friday. That is why we make the gear we make. That is why we believe that craftsmanship, ethics, and respect must come before sales.
If the world wants to rush forward, let it. We will continue moving at a pace that honors the places we love. We will continue building gear with intention. We will continue believing that enough is not a compromise but a path toward a future we can stand behind.
The ocean taught us that care is the only real currency we have. And care never goes on sale.