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05 Mar 2007
EAS success for Costumes With Character
Supplier: Costumes with Character Ltd
More Costumes with Character Ltd details
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2007 has got off to a flying start for Stockport-based Costumes With Character (CWC), the company having just returned from the EAS show in Seville with leads from around the world including Egypt, Finland and Saudi Arabia. The company already exports costumes to 37 countries, so they are hoping to increase this number.
CWC has the experience (25 years) and the skills (designers, sculptors, patternmakers, costumiers and very talented makers) to produce the most elaborate licensed character, but also uses the same skilled team to produce simpler lower budget costumes to match all requirements.
The company started life in 1986 originally named Situation Clothing, providing costumes for TV, theatre, advertising photography, programme credits and its first mascot was Welephant.
It is an established organisation with a team large enough to supply and support worldwide multinational companies from Pizza Hut to Accor Hotels, yet small enough to provide individual service to every customer.
The company recently relocated to a purpose built 7,000sq ft manufacturing studio, which includes sculpting and airbrush facilities as well as a large industrial equipped laundry and drying room for up to 100 costumes, sewing room, cutting rooms and head making department.
All customers are very welcome to visit the studio to see how their characters are created and meet the team that will construct their costumes and look after them in years to come.
Creating a character costume is only one part of the service; each comes with wear and care instructions and guidelines, and a full clean and refurbishment service is available to every customer to ensure their investment has a long life span and is keep looking like new. Some characters are still returning after 12 years of use, and can be updated with replacement parts and new outfits and image makeovers.
The move also created an on line costume shop, where budget ranges can be purchased from stock and also a very popular half price stock range section which sells exhibition samples and prototypes at very low prices.
The company has created individual mascot costumes for football teams such as Manchester United, leisure centres such as Concord Leisure and Wycombe Leisure and characters for many kids plays areas within the UK. A link up with SPI Play (UK) at LIW 2006, whereby CWC also made SPI's own mascot, strengthened the company's name within the field of kids play areas.
High profile clients include BBC, S4C, Nickelodeon and Kelloggs, with CWC currently providing a full set of all of the famous breakfast cereal characters for Ireland. They have made hundreds of costumes for chains such as Pizza Hut, Accor hotels, the Spirit Group and Whitbread. They supply characters for most of the holiday parks within the UK, as well as overseas holiday companies like Thomson and Airtours.
CWC works with UK theme parks such as Blackpool Pleasure Beach and Legoland, as well as overseas parks such as Walibi World throughout mainland Europe, Kongeparken in Norway and Mirabilandia in Italy.
Recent projects undertaken by the company include a commission to provide a new and improved bunny for Lowestoft's 'The Beach' radio station; the creation of a new owl Mascot, introduced for the 2006/7 football season, for Sheffield Wednesday Football Club; and working with Jackie Cooper PR to bring to life the dog characters for the 'Canine Corporation'
(web based company supplying doggy products) and creating a Kangaroo costume for Iceland to be used in the promotional ads for ITV’s “I’m a Celebrity” programme.
To prove that their costumes are built to last, CWC entered a tiger into the 7th Mascot Grand National at Huntingdon Racecourse in September ‘07. The costume remained in pristine condition, but it didn’t win. Fortunately another CWC-made mascot named ‘Max the Middlebrook Moose’ won the Best Turned out Mascot award.
Costumes with Character will be exhibiting at the Dubai Entertainment, Amusement & Leisure Show (DEAL) at the Dubai World Trade Centre between 22-24 April 2007.
Liz Milnes who started the company, had studied clothing design and technology in Manchester before becoming head of Costume at the Contact theatre in Manchester.
She worked as a costume designer for BBC Children’s programs, and supplied costumes for many Granada TV productions including Coronation Street and Stars in their Eyes.
The character costumes and mascots produced by Situation Clothing had the benefit of design and construction based on important practical considerations such as comfort and hygiene, vision ventilation adjustability and safety. Having worked behind the scenes in theatre and TV and often being responsible for the laundry and upkeep of costumes, all of the feed back from and requirements of actors and wearers was considered in the construction of the costumes.
The success of the characters and mascots led the company to specialize in very high quality custom manufactured character costumes, and change the name to Costumes with Character Limited. The variety of customers (from Harrods to Manchester United) can be seen on their website www.costumeswithcharacter.com.
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