in the beginning.

Everything begins with a brain wave.
Stephanie had been sitting on an idea for creating imaginative and fun children’s clothing. When Sophi came along and loved the idea and the potential, their respective brains whirred into action.

They found that a common complaint amongst their peers was that while there are good, affordable gender neutral clothes available for our kids up to the age of about 18 months, once they hit 2 everything becomes hyper-commercialised, hyper-gendered and far lower quality fabric.

If a customer is looking for natural fibres or interesting designs, options are limited, extremely expensive, and often still very, very gendered.

Stephanie + Sophi saw a gaping gap in the market. The more frustrated parents they talked to, the more they knew what they wanted to provide: kid-centric designs on range of coloured tees, appealing across the gender spectrum, that are high quality, responsibly sourced - and all at the best price they could manage.

In a matter of only a few months, the busy mamas had not only managed to come up with several seasons worth of designs, but put together their kaupapa, a fledgling website, their packaging bundle, sourced their suppliers, and teamed up with an incredible team of professional screen printers in Auckland who share their commitment to high quality products and ethical business practices.

Their banana slug. dream was quickly becoming a reality.

banana slug.
Our range of kid-centric, whimsical, hand-drawn designs are available on AS Colour kids T-Shirts in sizes 2-10. We also offer our “Colour-Me-Fancy” kit that includes high quality fabric paint and two items to hand-decorate: our Coy Koi T-Shirt, and/or Tea Towel.

When we started banana slug. back in December 2019 we were happily slowly building a client base in person at markets in Northland. We were also incredibly excited about preparing for our big launch in March at the General Collective market in Auckland, when all our work and planning got thoroughly Corona-ed.

We had to switch up our whole business model. Now, we are an online shop with the future hope of getting to see everyone’s lovely faces at markets sometime down the line.

We are extremely excited to finally be able to share our work with you fine folks and hope you enjoy it.