How Banana Tennis Started: A Kid’s Idea, a Designer Mom, and One Creative Year
Banana Tennis started with a kid’s idea — and grew into a hand-designed tennis brand for kids who proudly live and breathe the sport.
What began as a simple thought about colorful tennis gear slowly turned into something deeper: a creative journey built on design, family, trial and error, and a lot of heart.
Last November, Banana Tennis didn’t exist. It wasn’t even called Banana Tennis yet.
It started the way the best ideas often do: casually, playfully, and straight from a kid’s brain.
One afternoon, my son said something like:
“What if there was a tennis website… but for kids? And we create it?”
Not a boring one. Not a super technical one.
A fun one. A colorful one. One that felt made for us.
That spark stayed with me.
The Very First Idea: Selling Tennis Gear for Kids
At the beginning, the idea wasn’t clothing at all.
We imagined a website selling tennis gear for kids: colored tennis grips, cool backpacks, fun tennis balls, and accessories that felt playful instead of serious — a reference point for tennis kids, made by a kid.
The goal was simple: take the world of tennis — often very adult and performance-driven — and make it more joyful, approachable, and kid-centered.
It was a tennis website born from a kid’s perspective, not from rules or rankings.
When the Designer Brain Kicked In
As time passed, my designer brain couldn’t stay quiet.
I realized I didn’t just want to curate and re-sell existing products — I wanted to create something truly original, something hand-designed from scratch.
I started imagining what we would actually want to wear: on the court, at school, after practice, and on weekends. Pieces that said:
“Yeah, I play tennis. And I’m proud of it.”
That’s when Banana Tennis started shifting — from gear to expression, from accessories to identity.
The Name Brainstorm (Chaos Included)
Then came the naming phase — a very real one.
We brainstormed everything: Bruh Tennis, Tennis Underdogs, Broski Tennis, Low-key Tennis… and so many other truly chaotic ideas that will never see the light of day 😅 — until we landed on Banana Tennis and Pizza Tennis (because why not?).
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Fun fact: for a while, the website was actually called Pizza Tennis, and we even designed some very rough logos for it, which you can see here.
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We tested both names (Pizza Tennis and Banana Tennis) with friends to see which one stuck more — until everyone agreed that Banana was better than Pizza (I can’t believe I’m saying that, ahah).
That’s how Banana Tennis was born — playful, bold, ironic, and not taking itself too seriously.
You can even see how the very first idea of our logo came from a sketch by Leo.
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Skibidi Tennis (and Why We Let It Go)
When it came time to design the first batch of products, we decided to name our very first clothing collection Skibidi Tennis. I wanted to clearly differentiate the hand-designed t-shirts and hoodies from the other items we were selling at the time (like grips, tennis balls, and accessories).
We loved the sound, the energy, and the pure Gen Alpha chaos of Skibidi Tennis (I still love the name!).
So we started producing and testing samples branded Banana Tennis, with a “Skibidi Tennis Collection” tagline printed on each garment.
But after a lot of thinking and testing, we realized we didn’t want the brand to be tied too closely to a slang that could disappear in a year. On top of that, people were confusing the collection name with the brand itself.
So we made a conscious choice: move away from Skibidi Tennis as a name, simplify the branding — but keep the Gen Alpha mood, confidence, humor, and sass very much alive in the designs and voice.
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An example of a Skibidi Tennis Collection print sample. I still like this style tho... 👀
The Design Process (and the Reality Check)
Every single design is fully ideated by me: researching, sketching, refining, building the color palette and visual identity, playing with fonts and graphics. My favorite part.
Then came the samples — and that’s when I truly realized how different designing physical products is compared to digital work.
I used to be an Art Director at a social media agency in Los Angeles, designing campaigns that only lived on screens.
Print is a whole different world.
Some fine details don’t print well.
Colors are never as bright as you imagine (hello, CMYK).
Proportions are always slightly off.
And fabrics you love aren’t always the right choice for big, bold prints.
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See how this print got cut off on performance fabric? I cannot risk this to happen again, so I decided to focus on different, higher quality materials.
Some prints weren’t good.
Some colors looked right on screen but wrong in real life.
Some fabrics didn’t meet my standards — t-shirts that felt cheap, with low-quality cotton or approximate finishing, didn’t reflect what I had envisioned.
As a picky designer — and a fashion mom — I couldn’t compromise.
If I wouldn’t proudly put it on my kid, it didn’t belong in the brand.
So we reordered. Changed blanks. Tested materials. Adjusted fits.
Over and over again.
And then, of course, the products we loved went out of stock from suppliers — many times.
Building Everything from the Ground Up
At the same time, I was building everything else — on my own.
Shopify videos. Website settings. Product pages. Taxes. DBA. Shipping fees. Seller’s permits.
Photoshoots (styling, shooting, editing). Understanding AI (yes, we use it!). Learning CapCut. Trying to understand Meta, Instagram, Etsy, and Shopify settings.
Learning by doing. Fixing mistakes. Starting again.
Some days felt exciting.
Other days felt overwhelming.
There were moments when I thought: “Wow, this is a lot.”
And honestly — it is.
But every day, I added a small piece to the puzzle. And now the bigger picture is slowly starting to appear, reminding me that every single action counts — just like in everything else in life.
Still in Progress (and That’s the Point)
Banana Tennis isn’t “finished.”
And I don’t think it ever will be — in the best way possible.
There are still so many ideas brewing: new designs, new products, new ways to tell our story. Everything is evolving — and I’ve learned to embrace that, curious to see where it will go.
Looking Back with Gratitude
This year has been incredibly fulfilling — creatively and personally.
Building Banana Tennis reminded me why I love designing, experimenting, and creating something meaningful. It gave me the chance to build a brand together with my kid, and to share it with families who love tennis as much as we do.
I feel incredibly lucky to be doing this.
Imperfectly. Passionately. With a lot of heart.
Thank you for being here and supporting small, independent brands.
This is only the beginning. 🎾🍌
Stay tuned, Broski!!