About

Made in the Far North

North Swell is run out of the Far North of New Zealand, and it does two things that make more sense together than apart.

The first is media. We shoot real estate photography and video for agents and vendors across Northland — Whangārei, Kerikeri, the Bay of Islands and the coast in between — and we make social reels for local businesses who know they need video and do not want to hand a five-figure retainer to an Auckland agency to get it.

That work put us outdoors most days of the week. Coastal listings in a southerly. Twilight shoots where the light gives you eleven usable minutes. Lifestyle blocks where the drone goes up and you stand in a paddock for an hour waiting on cloud. It is good work. It is also hard on gear, and it turned out to be brutal on hats.

We went through a lot of them. Cheap caps that lost their shape in a week. Imported ones that never fit right — too shallow, too tight, or built for a head shape nobody we know actually has. So we made our own.

The Swell Seeker

The Swell Seeker is a 5-panel snapback made in New Zealand. Structured crown so it holds its shape, breathable panels because we wear it in summer, and a fit that works on a genuinely large head — which, going by the reviews, was a bigger problem than we realised. It comes in Kids, Regular and 2XL, fitting up to 66 cm.

We did not set out to run a clothing brand. We set out to solve our own problem, and it turned out a lot of people had the same one.

So that is North Swell. We film the coast, and we make the cap we wear while we do it.