Kansas City mom’s sporty kids pajamas a home run with Royals wives, bamboo moms
As a busy mom of two running a popular new business out of her Northland basement, Chloe Hartstack has had little trouble finding a market for her Kansas City sports-themed children’s pajamas made of bamboo.
Trendy bamboo moms of Johnson County who dress their littles in the lux fabric have become her most faithful customers.
The little Chiefs and Royals rompers and pajama sets have also scored high-profile attention.
Chiefs coach Andy Reid’s wife, Tammy, ordered some. And on opening day, Sarah Wacha, wife of pitcher Michael Wacha, posted a photo of her toddler daughter wearing a Royals set.
What some customers still stumble over, though, is pronouncing the name of her company.
Give it a try: Kansas City Keiki.
It’s pronounced “kay-kee.”
“People pronounce it wrong and I’m OK with that,” Hartstack said. “We get a lot of Kansas City kee-kee, which is cute too.”
Keiki is a Hawaiian word that means child or children, a nod to how this 34-year-old Kansas City transplant grew up in Hawaii. She is not native Hawaiian, though her husband’s mother is. “Our kids are little Kansas City keiki,” she said.
Hubby Keoni Hartstack grew up in southwest Iowa as a lifelong Chiefs fan, a passion for Kansas City sports Chloe gladly embraced after they met at a mutual friend’s wedding in Hawaii where Keoni went to college.
Other much larger companies sell bamboo clothing for children. But since launching on Black Friday in 2023, Kansas City Keiki has found a sweet spot, melding Kansas City’s passion for its sports teams with a growing thirst for unique team gear for kids.
“We’re giving them something they want, especially like these young parents now, like the Royals wives ... like the parents that are younger than me. They want their kids to look trendy,” she said. “Mom’s spending all this time planning her outfit and then the kids just have to have a gray cotton onesie that has a Royals logo on it.
“It’s a very niche but very popular kind of market that we’ve tapped into where you want your kids to look cute but also be comfortable. And also have stuff that maybe not every single person can get at Target.
“Because for my son, when school pictures come around or the yearbook comes around, half the kids in the class are wearing the same T-shirts from Target because we’re all shopping in the same area for everything else. And I think that’s why we’re gaining a lot of traction because people are hungry for it.”
Before she started her own line, Hartstack made custom Chiefs shirts for her 10-year-old son when he was littler. “I’ve always been kind of like the crafty moms,” she said. “I had one of those Cricut machines … so I was making him just cooler-looking Chiefs shirts when he was little.”
By the time her 2-year-old daughter was born, baby and children’s clothing made of bamboo had become trendy, giving rise to the term “bamboo moms” — passionate parents who don’t dress their kids in any other fabric.
What is bamboo fabric?
Light and airy, eco-friendly bamboo fabric — used for clothing, sheets, towels and other household textiles — is touted for being soft on baby skin, hypoallergenic, moisture-wicking and breathable, which prevents overheating.
Hartstack didn’t know anything about the fabric until she got pregnant with her daughter and “everybody was sending us these bamboo sleepers and pajamas from other brands. Everything that we were buying were these bamboo pajamas. And it was all she wore all day long. It was warm at night and it was cool enough during the day to stay in. They were super comfy,” she said.
But she still “couldn’t find anything cute for her to wear during Chiefs season.”
She was doing marketing work remotely from Kansas City for a New Zealand tech startup, making business contacts on an international level, when she began brainstorming a kids clothing line.
“And so I was like, how hard would it be for us to do some Chiefs pajamas like this so she can match us for game day but she can also wear it all night too,” she said.
“And so I did some research. I tested different vendors and suppliers to make sure we had quality that was good enough and then it just kind of blew up from there.”
(She jokingly tells people that no, she doesn’t make the garments herself and those zippers wouldn’t last in the wash if she did.)
She has learned that fans of bamboo baby wear are willing to pay a higher price. The staples of Hartstack’s line are $32 long-sleeved zippered rompers and $35 two-piece pajama sets. Moms can buy matching flare-legged pajamas for $70.
A five-pack of short-sleeved Carter onesies from Target, by comparison, currently costs $14.
“The thing that we’ve learned with bamboo, if you haven’t already been buying it, or have an experience buying it … I am not going to convince you in person to spend 30-something dollars on a pair of kids pajamas unless you have experience wearing it, feeling it, having your kids wear it. It’s a harder sell,” Hartstack said.
“People will feel it and like, ‘Oh, that’s soft, but ... I could buy a set of pajamas at Walmart for $10.’ We’re not going to convince those people. But also, if you wanted to just buy a Chiefs cotton shirt at like the team store at a game, you’d spend $40.
“The Johnson County market, they are our people. We don’t have to tell them. They buy every print that we come out with. They are fans of all the teams we have.
“I think part of this business that I wasn’t expecting to be so rewarding and amazing is now I have customers in my DMs that are friends and they send me pictures of their kids from last year, I’m watching babies grow up.”
Hartstack is currently working on a plan to create specialty prints to raise money for local nonprofit organizations.
“It’s a no-brainer to buy the sports ones for game days, but if you are in need of another pair of pajamas and your local nonprofit has one, that’s an easy buy too,” she said. “I’m excited about that because it feels more meaningful than the stuff we’ve been doing. Everybody loves the Chiefs prints, but if we can be wearing and buying jams that are supporting real causes, that’s amazing, too.
“And it’s using our influence for making a difference. because I think in Kansas City, we are proud of our sports teams. But I think overall Kansas City is loyal to Kansas City. We love our city, we love our sports, we love our small businesses. I think that’s part of what made me fall in love with Kansas City and move here.”
Kansas City Chiefs golf shirts coming next
“Her designs are really fun and bright and obviously sports-centered too,” said Kansas City social media influencer Amanda Bergmann, who has 40,000 followers on her Nomastayinkc Instagram account. “I think sometimes sports products for kids and babies are kinda ugly and hers are certainly not. I loved that she did a line of mommy PJs that match the fabrics for the littles, too and that was fun.
“I really like the quality of the items. They’ve held up really well, and I would say too because they’re so stretchy they’ve lasted my (18-month-old) daughter a really long time, too. She’s been able to wear the same size for a long period of time.”
Kansas City Keiki is a family affair with the couple’s rambunctious 2-year-old daughter serving as the face of the brand — they do photoshoots in their garage — and Keoni himself inspiring a recent addition to the line for dads.
“We kinda soft-launched it, we’re testing golf shirts,” Hartstack said. “Mostly because my husband’s like, ‘I don’t need men’s sweatpants to match our daughter but I would like a golf shirt.’”
Hartstack designed the company’s eye-catching signature print — a checked pattern in various team colors. Red and gold for Chiefs. Baby blue and dark blue for the Royals. Blue and red for the Kansas Jayhawks.
“We have a KC Current checkers (in teal and red) ...” she said. “We haven’t done Sporting. I’ve been on the fence just because the colors are very similar to the Royals. So that’s kind of on hold to see.
“I think we’re kind of done with our college teams, unless we have a huge influx of people requesting more teams.”
She also created “doodle” patterns for the teams, spending hours of research learning traditions, songs and other details to illustrate.
Keoni, a lawyer, makes sure their prints don’t run afoul of NFL, MLB and NCAA rules.
“We are extra careful on copyright infringement and what we are doing because I design all our designs. But I’m not using any actual Royals logos or Chiefs logos, just using the color and sticking with the themes,” Hartstack said. “And people are OK with that because they know they can buy the shirt that actually has the Royals logo if they want to. But it’s just having options, especially for baseball because there are so many games.
“We launched with the Chiefs in the beginning with our first year. But baseball kind of gives us the bigger opportunity because the season is longer, there are so many more games and ... you’re more likely to be able to take your kids to a baseball game than a Chiefs game. Everything is much more geared toward making your kids a part of it and the games are longer.”
Influencers — and Royals and Chiefs, too
Hartstack’s marketing plan includes participating in pop-up events, especially in Johnson County, and getting the pajamas into the hands of local influencers like Bergmann who can boost interest.
“Especially for this Kansas City market I knew I wanted to utilize some influencer marketing to help us because word of mouth is so important, especially because we’re so niche focusing on Kansas City,” she said. “So that’s been really huge for us so far.
“There’s a really amazing community in Kansas City of local influencers that are a variety of mom influencers, style influencers, things to do around Kansas City influencers. And they are all very supportive of promoting small businesses and shopping local.
“We have a handful that have gotten to know us and love our products and have just kind of helped to share that they love our stuff with their followers and that’s been huge for us growing our brand locally.”
Hartstack also reached out to several Chiefs and Royals wives, including Wacha. “It’s a lot of sliding into DMs on Instagram,” she laughed.
“It’s kind of like the luck of the draw. I just kinda do research on who the players are, who their wives are, which ones have kids, which ones have kids in our age range. We have sizes up to 5T. So it’s like who’s pregnant, who has babies, who has cute kids. Then it’s reaching out with a message, explaining our brand and we’d love to send you an outfit ...”
After Sara Wacha tagged the company on opening day, another Royals wife began following Kansas City Keiki on Instagram and Hartstack sent her a package of goodies for her son, just in time for his birthday.
“It’s a lot of like waiting and hoping and putting all your dreams into these messages,” she said. “I sent messages and packages to try to get our stuff to Brittany Mahomes ... I sent a box to the Kansas City Current office and I’m not sure what happened to it.”
She’s noticed this season that the Royals wives are wearing a lot of custom gear.
“They’re doing big matching jackets with their husband’s names and numbers, so now we just need Bobby Witt to have a baby and that will be perfect,” she laughed. (Witt got married last year.)
She won’t forget the day an online order came from a woman named Tammy Reid.
She recognized the name. But could it be?
It was Andy Reid’s wife.
“Now, he has a ton of grandkids and she only ordered like two specific sizes, it was probably for a gift or something,” Hartstack said. “And so I sent basically every Chiefs print that I had in those two sizes and a note that said ‘Andy Reid’s grandbabies do not pay for Kansas City Keiki pajamas.’”
This story was originally published April 11, 2025 at 7:00 AM.
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