Nikolas Melis
Nikolas was born in Athens on July 16, 1965.
In 1984 he studied jewelery making for two years and in 1988 he studied for one year at the Vakalo Art & Design School. In the winter of 1993 he took private lessons in jewelry design and design concept development. His main teacher, throughout these years, was the sculptor and decorator Lazaros Pauris. He worked by his side on a wide range of applied arts and techniques, such as stage construction, promotional material, design and construction of exhibition stands, sculptures, furniture and more.
From 1996 to 1998 he open a workshop in the Psiri area of Athens, where he manufactured jewelry and begins of his work on wood. He made usable objects, store sings, decorative and sculptural compositions, furniture and store decorations. He also began the restoration of old objects and specialised in hand-crafted bookbinding.
From 2001 until the end of 2016 he maintained a workshop of handmade jewelry and other handicrafts in Tsagarada, Pelion called "Iska" along with his wife Areti.
From 1991 to 1997, he also worked as an external partner at advertising and promotion company called "The Promotion Center" (TPC), as promoter in the Alaied Domeq Sailing Promotion (a two-month brand promotion program that ran for three consecutive years, with a sailing boat in 18 Aegean islands), where he also performed second skiper duties and the Serkova Cup Sail Odyssey (a ten-day sailboat race with a similar advertising approach as the previous one). Also through the TPC he is involved in producing and performing similar promotional programs nationwide until the year 1997 - such as the Nafplio Classical Music Festival. He also worked as a stylist in advertising photography.
In 1991, whilst the TPC is in charge of the entire program, he joined in the production team of The Camel Trophy event, through which the Greek crew that participated in the international final was sellected. He remained in this position for three consecutive tournaments. His responsibilities covered organisational structure, promotional material production, winter camp organizing, camp material management and warehousing, and brand design planning. It is in this period where his childhood fascination with nature formed into a vocational education and since then he followed constantly a path of relevant outdoor activities, with his primary focus on being engaged with nature and the environment.
In 2013 all this experience and knowledge culminated to him being a main coordinator in the design, organisation and production of the Tsagarada Escape Festival (a four-day collaborative event with a multitude of outdoor activities and parallel thematic and music events, held every Summer in Pelion, by the Tourist & Development Association of Tsagarada)
In 2014 he opened an outdoor activities office by the brand name "Hike Away" in Tsagarada, Pelion.
Since 2017, he has been organising and managing the Green Mountain, a purpose-built and landscaped outdoor activity area in the forest of Tsagarada. His winter trips in recent years, mainly to Pindos, brought him close to like-minded people, sharing the vision to plan and build a long distance hiking trail that would cross Greece through Pindus Mountains.