Toronto is home to over half-a-dozen successful mascot companies, the largest concentration of mascot companies in the world. A
Macleans feature looks at how Toronto became the global leader in this niche, but highly profitable, industry.
"Toronto is the mascot mecca of the world," says Christina Simmons, president of Loonie Times Inc., one of the half-dozen mascot companies in the city."
"Why Toronto? "I think we just put more TLC into them," says Simmons. Unlike mass-produced mascots made overseas, Toronto's mascots are conceived by bona-fide artisans. Take Sugar's Costumes Studio, founded in 1980 by Peter deVinta, an Italian immigrant who comes from a long line of tailors. (His father, Joseph, now 91, was a master tailor in Italy who worked for top military generals.) A medium-sized firm, Sugar's makes upwards of 400 mascots a year. Some are famous, like the Blue Jays' Ace, and others obscure, like the Calvary Chapel's California Nuts for Jesus: PJ, Al, Wally and Hazel. DeVita just shipped Nahkool, a date palm tree and mascot of a town in Bahrain."
"The companies hire from nearby schools, like OCAD University and Seneca College, who pump out sculptors, designers and sewers. "When you're making a custom character like the Honey Nut Bee, you need a fashion design graduate so they can do the pattern drafting and do the math to look like the design," says Mike Chudleigh, president of 1-800-Mascots, another local firm."
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