Business has getups galore after rural sale

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This article was published 02/10/2008 (6379 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

IT sounds like a fairy tale — small-town entrepreneur stumbles upon the mother of all costume caches and almost overnight is transformed into one of the largest costume houses in the country.

The tale began in January of this year, when Birds Hill entrepreneur Ruthanna Drysdale stumbled across an ad for a Neepawa-area costume rental business that was for sale.

“It said 30,000 costumes and I thought it was a typo,” Drysdale said Wednesday. “So I phoned her (the farm wife who owned and operated the business) and asked her, ‘is it true you have 30,000 costumes?’ And she said, ‘yes.’ ”

So Drysdale and her husband hopped in the car and raced over to Neepawa to check things out. She said she was “absolutely blown away” by what she found when they arrived.

“She took us from building to building and there were aisles and aisles of costumes. We were just floored.”

It turns out the woman had been making and purchasing costumes for about 15 years and renting them out, mainly for use in school plays and theatrical productions. And now she was getting out of the business and selling off her collection.

After getting over her initial shock, Drysdale purchased the entire collection and arranged to have everything shipped back to her home in Bird’s Hill, where she and her sister, Amanda Carrette, operated their own home-based costume design and rental business — Marvelous Mascots Inc.

“It took three and a half semi-trailers to get everything here,” she said with a laugh. “We quickly realized all this wouldn’t fit in our basement.”

So the following month they leased about 7,700 square feet of space in a commercial building on the corner of Logan Avenue and Sherbrook Street and began transforming it into a showroom/workshop/storage facility for their busting-at-the-seams business, which is now called Mavelous Mascots Inc… & Everything Else.

Today the transformation will be complete with the grand opening of their new Winnipeg digs.

“We were a bit player. We had only a few hundred costumes, and now we’ve got 30,000,” Drysdale said. “I don’t know what the pecking order is (in Canada), but this has to put us up there (near the top).”

The co-owner of Marvellous Mascot’s biggest local competitor – Winnipeg-based Harlequin Costume & Dance — claims Harlequin is the second largest costume house in the country, with between 18,000 and 20,000 complete costumes. The only shop that’s bigger is one in Toronto, Scott Malabar added.

Malabar said it’s open to debate which local shop is bigger — Harlequin or Marvellous Mascots. He said it will also be interesting to see if there’s room in the local market for two big players.

“Traditionally, the only city in Canada that ever supported two (major) costume rental companies is Toronto. So having another competitor is not the best news I’ve heard.” But Malabar agreed with Drysdale that there’s a growing demand these days for rental costumes, not only from schools, theatre groups, and film companies, but corporate and individual clients, as well.

“We’re seeing more themed wedding socials and themed parties,” Malabar said.

Drysdale said costumes are also in big demand for birthday and anniversary parties, as well as corporate functions.

“It’s surprising how many costume parties now occur away from the Hallowe’en season,” she added. “It’s something the younger generation seems to be getting into more and more.”

With their new-found collection, she and Carrette also will be able to pursue more rental opportunities within the theatrical and film industries, as well.

They also have their original line of work – designing, cleaning, and repairing mascot costumes — to fall back on. The sisters have already carved out a good business for themselves in that area. Some of their better-known mascot creations include the Winnipeg Blue Bombers “Buzz and Boomer”, the Winnipeg Goldeyes “Goldie,” and the Children’s Hospital Foundation’s “Dr. Goodbear.”

murray.mcneill@freepress.mb.ca