Stratos Band: A Note from Our Product Manager on Craftsmanship and Authenticity

Nomad Community, 

We launched Stratos Band earlier this week and have been blown away by the positive response so far. The development and launch of this band have been a true labor of love, and we’re stoked to see how much you all are loving it. 

Now, shifting to a less fun part of any product launch, let’s talk knock-offs. At Nomad, we're a proud, product-first company. We design and develop everything we sell in-house, and produce our products with trusted partners in the U.S. and Asia. We're fortunate to work with such skilled manufacturers, but making great products that people love inevitably leads to imitations. Unfortunately, counterfeit products of nearly every Apple Watch band we make can be found on the internet, and as much as it hurts us to see, there is little we can do about it.

During Stratos Band's development, our design was unfortunately leaked within the supply chain to a knockoff factory, which began producing and selling a band using our proprietary design. We hold pending design patents that were filed months ago. As fakes appear online, we do what we can to shut them down, but IP laws can be difficult to enforce, especially without a granted patent.

Stratos Band counterfeits, along with fake versions of our Sport Band and Rocky Point Band, can be found if you go looking for them. But please know this: these are products made using stolen designs, built with cheap materials, loose quality control, no warranty, and no verified safety or chemical certifications.

We can't stop people from buying knockoffs, but it's important to us that our community knows this: Every single Nomad product is designed and developed by our team in Santa Barbara, California. We build products for people who care about quality and thoughtful design, each one meticulously developed, iterated on, and refined to ensure you're getting the very best we can make.

Knockoffs suck, but they’re part of this business. We’re endlessly grateful to every Nomad customer who continues to support us, and we’ll never stop making products we love in the hopes that you do too.

Harvey Hunerberg

Director of Product Management