The concept of Banana Industries was born on a dimly lit dev green skate park back in 2012 myself (Tom) and Fabio discussed how we hate the way things are done. At the time we had all these grand idea's about how things should be made, how things should stand the test of time, be durable, and generally have better functionality - and still today we hold these values dear, but lordy lord, the ride wasn't as easy as we had once imagined!
We started off with printing and selling t-shirts to uni societies, we quickly realised people actually liked the stuff we putting out. At this point we were operating out of Fabio's bedroom in a student house, which quickly turned into a full office/production sweathouse, purely self inflicted of course. Then 6 years of producing and just scraping by, we finally manage to quit our other jobs and find a unit. This was a game changer, as over the previous years we had moved more than 6 times. Super long but a necessity when you can't afford a unit and living situations are ever changing. Bedrooms, attics, living rooms to an old corridor room in a disused building, it had been manic.
In 2019 we took on our saviour Cov - as the first official member of staff, he saved us from the despair of never ending work, and so we managed to claw back some free time which was well needed after years of unpaid overtime. In 2020 we also welcomed our homie Gray to the Banana family too. Cov and Gray are real bro's with the perfect hardy character and solid mentality you need to be a proper banana. 2021 Saw us take on our first female employee El, Big El, Ellen, Robbo, whatever you wanna call her she's a real G. Super talented she fits the mould perfectly So now this merry band of brothers (El insists on being a brother which is rad ) is five strong - and we ain't slowing down! And yeh, we do all love to ride bikes, amongst all the other wonderful things in life. But sadly we can't do this all day long, as we're here making you guys wonderful garms : ).
We've also been with 3dumb since the beginning, we've had the pleasure of growing as a unit and both getting to flourish and see the fruits of the labour - it's been a pleasure working with this bro, he's got the ethic and mentality down to a t, and never surprises us with his creativity, and sometimes, straight up insanity. Sometimes the best kind of sense - is nonsense.
Anyhow, in a nutshell - that's the story thus far.
What you need to know - we keep it seriously real, we don't sell out, produce crap, rip people off or work purely based off hype. We've spend years in practice making the best stuff we can. We also do all of our embroidery and printing ourselves - so you know you're getting top quality straight from the brothers here at Banana!
And lets not forget, we don't use any plastic in our packaging - ever - and we haven't done for a few years (take note you big corporate fucks!).
Peace n love be with you - oh faithful banana clannians
BIG LOVE
BANANA BRUTHA'S
