First designed in 1985, today’s Pudsey has undergone a slight update from the original, with the introduction of multi-coloured spots on the bandana and the removal of his black buttons, but he’s just as cute and friendly as he has ever been.
Please note, Costumes with Character are the official supplier of Pudsey bear to BBC CIN, producing Pudsey for CIN and their partners.
We are unable to hire out Pudsey, as he is made to order.
Sporting a spotty bow and rosy red cheeks, Blush made her TV debut with Pudsey on a charity edition of Strictly Come Dancing. Since then, Blush and Pudsey have gone on to raise millions of pounds to help disadvantaged children throughout the UK.
Please note, Costumes with Character are the official supplier of Pudsey and Blush bear to BBC CIN, producing Blush for CIN and their partners.
We are unable to hire out Blush, as she is made to order.
The tourism and leisure industry has been hit the hardest but thousands of talented UK makers have put their furloughed skills to good use by producing entirely different products to help the keyworkers who have been vital in fighting Covid-19.
Eager to help out, CWC linked up with Make it British to discuss the need for mass produced PPE. Unfortunately, due to the approved certification required for PPE we were disappointed not to be able to get involved in supplying PPE, however Scrubs were a different matter. Scrub Hubs popped up across the country, with members using donated funds to produce much-needed scrubs. Our furloughed staff worked hard to produce scrubs for their local hubs.
Fabric facemasks donated by Costumes with Character Russell Bear for Forget Me Not Children’s Hospice
CWC wanted to directly express our gratitude to the NHS workers, and donated funds towards the materials used by the Wigan Scrub Hub and Cyber Sausage @theatricalstagecostumes
Our Creative Director produced patterns for face masks and headbands which addressed the complaint of sore ears NHS staff were raising after having worn their masks for long periods.
The team produced over 200 masks and headbands for local care homes, customers and even characters!
We were pleased to quickly respond to the needs of a charity raising funds for the local community. They needed some replacement costume parts but had been let down by the original manufacturer of the costume.
The charity sector is another area that has suffered. Mascots are always a fantastic fund-raising tool. We have been told by customers that they receive three times as many donations when their character is present at events.
We’re always keen to support charities, offering reduced rates and donating to worthy causes. Needless to say, we love animals here at CWC and are pleased to support Compassion in World Farming (https://www.ciwf.org.uk/), the world’s leading farm animal welfare organisation.
The Rockhopper Penguin we donated to Edinburgh ZooWe work with charities large and small, from BBC Children In Need to smaller charities such as Millie’s Trust. We have pledged to donate a character costume a year. Last year we produced Russell bear for Forget Me Not Children’s Hospice in Huddersfield (https://www.forgetmenotchild.co.uk)
Zoos have been severely impacted by the pandemic and we wanted to help out. This year we have donated a Rockhopper Penguin to Edinburgh Zoo, famed for their Penguin Parades.
“The rockhopper arrived the other day and it looks fantastic! Can’t wait to use it! Many thanks once again!”
ALEXANDER TURNBULL Visitor Experience Manager, RZSS Edinburgh
We hope he works hard for them!
The pandemic is an ongoing challenge for us all but if there ever was a time to #bekind, it’s now.
Liz Milnes
When you create, manage and grow a business, the last thing you think about is your exit strategy, and this for me has been one of the most difficult challenges.
Almost 35 years on, both of my companies, Costumes with Character and Auscoz are considered to be two of the most successful mascot manufacturers in the world, providing mascots and characters for many of the most high-profile companies and character creators on the planet.
But the thing I am most proud about isn’t having founded and grown these two companies, it is having created jobs; interesting, creative and enjoyable work, in a great environment, for so many people, for so many years.
This is why succession planning to ensure the jobs were protected and company continued to grow was so important to me.
I am grateful to Postlethwaites Solicitors who introduced me to the concept of EOTS and created the Trust and structure for CWC.
Liz Milnes
Costumes With Character EOT Management team: Debbie Aylward, Alison Hilton, Marie Harrison, Amanda Pritchard, Michelle Barton and Clare Kinross
After 34 years of producing high quality, practical and affordable character costumes, founder and MD of Costumes With Character Ltd Liz Milnes has transferred 100% of her company shares in to the Costumes With Character Employee Ownership Trust, which will hold them on behalf of the company’s staff.
Lego
Under the guidance of Postlethwaite Solicitors, Costumes With Character became an employee-owned company. This move is a way of preparing the company for the future by ensuring Costumes With Character remains an independent company, and the job security of the loyal staff (who have invested so much time, talent and effort in to making Costumes With Character the world class brand it is today) is safeguarded.
The success of Costumes With Character is dependent upon the skills
and attitude of the team; selling the company would put it at risk but
transferring its ownership to the staff would secure the company
long-term and preserve its current working culture for the future.
Besides ensuring the company will continue to thrive beyond her
retirement, Liz wanted the staff to see real rewards for their hard
work. This company structure means that the staff can see the
benefits of their hard work by receiving a share of the company’s
profits each year, and also have a say in business decisions.
Costumes with Character EOT Trustees L-R: Alison Dermott, Liz Milnes, Emma Stanton
The senior management team will remain in their existing roles, with
Liz acting as the MD in the transitional period, business decisions
will be made by the management team as a whole, with the trustees (who
are a combination of directors, employees and others with no
commercial stake in the business) ensuring the management team are
acting in the company’s best interests.
Employee Owned Trusts are a fast-growing business structure option in
the UK. Recently there has been growth in employee ownership as a
succession option for small and medium sized businesses and family
businesses.
“…The creation of an employee trust, is the best solution we have
found for keeping Aardman doing what it does best, keeping the teams
in place and providing continuity for our highly creative culture. And
of course, those that create value in the company will continue to
benefit directly from the value they create”.Peter Lord and David Sproxton – Aardman
“To me, the decision to sell the company to my colleagues was an
obvious one. Nobody knew my business better than the people in it and
we’d created a culture together”Julian Richer – Richer Sounds
Nickelodeon
Liz Milnes founded and created “Costumes With Character”, Initially called “Situation Clothing”, in 1986. Her background as a costume designer for screen and stage led her to identify a need for high quality, practical, comfortable character costumes. Liz wanted to produce costumes, which not only looked great but also carefully considered the wearer’s requirements and the practicalities needed for costume maintenance, such as ensuring the costumes were washable and individual parts were easily replaceable.
Liz relocated to Australia a number of years ago, after receiving orders from several Australian companies and seizing the opportunity to grow the business in another hemisphere. She set up Costumes With Character’s sister company “Aus Coz” in Currumbin, Queensland and has experienced great success there too, working with Dream World, The Wiggles, The Commonwealth Games 2018, The Invictus Games and The Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary among many others.
Aardman Animations
The move provided CWC staff with the opportunity to work in Australia and increased our understanding of the construction materials and methods required to produce costumes that are suitable for warmer climates.
The challenges faced in warmer countries included heat, UV fading and costume elements requiring glues more resilient to temperature than UK costumes. A base in Australia also opened up the possibility of sourcing different materials and technologies that weren’t yet commonplace in the UK.
Liz was actively involved in both businesses on a daily basis and returned to the UK for 3 months every year.
Some of the staff have been with the company from the very beginning and have seen it go from strength to strength.
Costumes With Character now produce over 400 costumes and puppets every year for a range of industries and household names including:
Tourism
Sports
Leisure
Charity
Retail
See full commentary by Liz Milnes
Read more about employee ownership at Postlethwaits Solicitors: https://postlethwaiteco.comwww.employeeownership.co.uk
We understand that mascots are a vital, eye-catching tool, which help to raise the profile of a charity, encourage fundraising and help them to stand out at a busy event. Mascots provide an instantly recognisable face for your brand, and help you to be instantly recognisable at events. We want every charity to have this opportunity and this is why we are keen to regularly support charity with a yearly costume donation to the charity of our choice, and special discounted rates, no matter the size of the organisation.
Charities we work with include: BBC Children in Need, Macmillan, Millie’s Trust, Soi Dog Foundation, Merlin’s Magic Wand, Cancer Research UK, Claire House Hospice, Francis House, Children’s Adventure Farm Trust, The Christie and Zoe’s place to name a few.
We recently donated a character to Forget Me Not Children’s Hospice, Huddersfield, just in time for Christmas.
Fundraiser Lynsey Marshall reached out to us via our website:
“…As a local charity relying heavily on charitable donations from the community – income generation is our number one focus outside of the care delivery aspect.
Building awareness and engagement at our events across West Yorkshire is of upmost importance and the one thing we hugely lack in comparison to other charities is a mascot…Being a small charity with an equally small budget – I wondered if this is something you might be able to help us with …”
Forget me not children’s hospice is based at Russell House in Huddersfield. The hospice provides respite for patients, carers and siblings as well as offering support for families in their own home.
“Our vision is for a world in which children and young people no longer face life-shortening conditions. And until that day comes, our mission will always be to offer them, and their families, as much support, love and laughter as they can handle.
Time after time, people who meet us tell us they’re astonished that a children’s hospice could be so happy. The day we stop surprising people like this will be the day we put our coats on and go home. We believe in creating joy, holding onto it, and spreading it – and yes, you can do that in a children’s hospice.”
As with many charities the majority of their support comes from donations. They only receive 3.3% of their income from the government. As such they frequently hold fundraising events to enable them to raise the funds they need to continue to provide the Yorkshire area with outstanding support. We set about designing an eye-catching character, based on the charity’s logo – a flower. We also noticed that they sold a small bear online and produced two further designs, one with a branded T-shirt and one with their signature branded purple hoodie. The designs and fabric samples were sent over to Lynsey and the families at the hospice picked their favourite.
Russell is ready in time for Christmas and was launched at the charity’s annual “Little Lights” Christmas event on 2nd December. This is an event that brings together bereaved families to celebrate, remember and reflect upon their loved ones’ lives. The feedback we received from the charity, patients and supporters was wonderful, with many taking to social media to comment on the charity’s new, cuddly mascot. He was the star of the show, with Lynsey telling us:
“He was amazing, he went down an absolute storm…as soon as he came out the event came to life!”
The charity plan to feature Russell at upcoming fundraising opportunities and events such as bag packing, their Santa’s grotto at Trinity Walk Shopping Centre and their annual Huddersfield Colour Run. You can support the valuable work Forget Me Not children’s hospice does, read more about their events and keep up with Russell’s appearances on their website.
Facebook @forgetmenotchildrenshospice
Twitter: @ForgetMNotchild
We were delighted to work with Forget Me Not Children’s Hospice and know that Russell will work hard throughout the community to encourage many donations.
If you need a character for your charity we’re here to help. 
Call us on 0161 442 8740 or email to really get your brand noticed at an affordable rate. If you already have a CWC charity costume who is in need of a refresh, take advantage of our refurbishment service. We offer a special discounted rate for returning CWC-made charity costumes. Our team will fully clean and repair your character costume, bringing it back to an excellent standard ready to fundraise for you again.
Rwbi Dwbi is a rabbit character costume we produced for the BBC Cymru online learning portal. She features on the Y Goeden Greu pages, designed to help youngsters aged 5-7 develop their Welsh language skills. She has lots of fun details on her outfit, including jewelled headress, sari underneath her dungarees, golden vinyl bangles and toolbelt, with tools. Rwbi Dwbi has an oversized but lightweight ABS head with wearer vision through her doe eyes and mouth. She is made with a half fur body, and an airtex underbody worn underneath her dungarees to help create her bodyshape. She has large mascot scaled rabbit feet, which can be removed for ease of washing and importantly indoor/outdoor soles.
Rwbi Dwbi and friends can be found on this BBC Wales website: https://www.bbc.co.uk/cymru/dysgu/ygoedengreu/parents/caneuon.shtml
Need further bunny rabbit inspiration? How about Bramble O’Hare: https://costumeswithcharacter.com/product/bramble-ohare-character-costume/
With the BBC’s Children in Need just around the corner, reports are coming in that Pudsey Bear is once again being sighted around the UK. Lighting up charity events and shopping centres the length and breadth of the country, his golden fur and signature spotty eye patch all fresh and ready for a new season of telethon fund-raising, Pudsey can be seen shaking his bucket and ultimately at some point his behind, all in the name of raising money for a fantastic cause.
Children in Need was first televised in 1980. Prior to this, the BBC had several radio and televised charity events under various names with a similar aim: to change the lives of disabled children and young people across the UK. It wasn’t until 1985 that Pudsey Bear made his first televised appearance for the charity. Designed by BBC graphic artist Joanna Ball, Pudsey got his name from the town in which Joanna was born and her father was mayor. The first design was a triangular logo with a sad-looking yellow bear sporting a red bandana with black triangles dotted across it, who was loosely designed to look like Sooty (who had hosted previous telethon and charity events).
The teddy bear, the lower case letters and phonetics in his name were all thoughtfully considered to ensure that the logo and sentiments behind it were conscientiously child- and adult-friendly. This simple design was updated a year later to the more popular smiling Pudsey with familiar white spotty bandana, sat upon children’s building blocks spelling the charity name, which would be used up until 2006. Initially, Pudsey was created as a teddy bear and it wasn’t until a few years later that the costume walk-about characters came on to the scene, allowing Pudsey’s reach to go further than ever before and for the cuddly character to get physically involved in the charities work.
In 2007, an agency was commissioned with giving Pudsey a refresh and the cuddly character was re-designed, losing his buttons and gaining a new multi-coloured bandana to bring him right up to date and to keep the yellow bear relevant in our ever changing world. Partly, the new design was to increase his internet appeal by considering his online presence and how the character would translate from the physical to the digital when gesturing and moving around on screen in animated form. Two years later Pudsey was joined by Blush, a female companion (just friends I believe) and brown bear sporting a spotty bow in the same colours as Pudsey’s bandana. Blush was conceived to increase the charities appeal and attract more corporate partners by diversifying the brand. Blush is also around to give Pudsey a hand from time to time by attending some of the fundraising events alongside him. All in the name of a good cause, the BBC’s Children in Need has raised over £650 million since its inception in 1980, with large thanks to Pudsey and the late, great Terry Wogan who, up until his death in 2016 had presented the show every year without fail (he backed out of presenting in 2015 due to ill health).
This year sees a very special Children in Need Rocks concert that pays homage to the life and fundraising prowess of one of the nation’s most loved presenters. In true Terry style, all proceeds will go to the Children in Need charity he so dearly cherished. Here at CWC, we are extremely proud to be the ONLY official approved supplier of Pudsey and Blush bears to fundraisers across the UK and we do our part to ensure that each and every Bear that leaves our studio is finished perfectly and uses only the very best materials to ensure that whatever is thrown in Pudsey and Blush’s direction, they can fundraise and frolic without a care.
For those of you who are considering using an existing character, or creating a new furry figurehead for your charity or business and would like to get involved with fundraising, then choosing a Mascot as your campaign ambassador is a clever move. Although there haven’t been many studies to show the impact of a charity mascot on Charitable donations, it’s well known that a bubbly brand ambassador can increase the amount of cash collected for a cause. The reasons for this are varied and I’m sure everyone has their opinion on what it is that makes a Mascot such an effective charity Spokes-character but here’s a few that I think are fundamentally important considerations as to the reason why.
Firstly, a mascot can be the anthropomorphic representation of a business or cause. As humans, we have a tendency to try and understand the world through animalistic association, often humanising, or giving a ‘personality’ to objects and things so that we can make sense of them and interact with them appropriately. It’s much easier to interact with a character than it is to make conversation with a brick wall as a very obvious example, so charities and businesses anthropomorphise their values and beliefs to make people more susceptible to interaction, and in turn, this makes the general public more likely to sympathise with the cause and dig that little bit deeper into their pockets.
A mascot character also strengthens the consumer awareness of a brand. Pudsey Bear is a fantastic example of this working for a charity. Exposure over many years has firmly cemented him as the Spokes-Character of Children in Need and he is very much a fundamental part of their fundraising drive. People quite simply love Pudsey. He’s as popular now as he has ever been, especially with 
his update and transition to the internet in 2007, increasing the reach of his charitable donations bucket to a worldwide audience. Now, you don’t even need to see the charity name to associate Pudsey with the Children in Need brand, he is that brand.
We, as members of the general public have also built an emotional connection with this loveable ambassador and his worthy cause, I mean who wouldn’t? The mission statement, the cuddly Characteristics and the Child-like glee of high fiving, or interacting with a giant Teddy Bear allows us to form a warm and positive opinion of the charity, trusting that the donations we are giving will be going to a very good cause. This model can be seen across many charities around the world, incorporating some form of Mascot as the ambassador for 
their cause with the aim of maximising on donations.
Lastly a mascot is, for the most part, cute and cuddly. That in itself is more than enough to cause an emotional reaction in the general public and melt even the coldest heart. A lot of charity mascots are designed to remind us of soft toys and pets that we may have had when we were younger. ‘This nostalgic association evokes higher levels of emotion and donation intentions within the general public than charities without this connection’. Not my words, but the words of John B. Ford and Altaf Merchant from a study into the power of charitable appeals based on emotions and intentions conducted in 2010. So genuine scientific proof confirms that considerations in design to incorporate some aspect of nostalgia for the target audience will in fact affect the final total in a positive way.
Now we’ve discussed a couple of reasons why mascots increase charitable donations, backed up by a little bit of science right at the end, I think it would be unfair to give you all this information without giving you some ideas as to how you can use your character to fundraise for your chosen charity, so here’s a few ideas to spark your charitable creativity:
1. Pounding the pavement
This is the tried and tested method of actually getting out there to busy shopping areas and town centres with your bucket in hand, using all of your Character charms to interact with the general public. You can dance with them, wave, hi-five, you name it but be careful not to get too carried away. Not everyone will be interested in playing along so make sure you judge the situation wisely. However, if you pick the right people, the donations will come pouring in. Especially if your character has built up a bit of a crowd with its antics. It’s also a great way to gain exposure in your local area. People will ask questions and some may even take photos or video, increasing your exposure should people upload their videos and photos to the world wide web. This last point is of course relevant for most activities simply because mascots aren’t something you see every day (unless you work for a mascot maker or are actually a mascot) and makes an interesting discussion topic.
2. Create a social media presence
Your character is the voice of your charity or business so why not give it some freedom to interact away from the confines of the physical using social media. You can use it as a platform to introduce your character, what the charity does and what events are happening that involve your Mascot, but in a way that doesn’t feel like a great big advert. Giving your character this platform allows it to create its own identity that people can associate and interact with in a way they couldn’t if it was just a general charity page. All of a sudden your character becomes an individual, with feelings and emotions that the public can relate to. As mentioned above, this anthropomorphic model of your charity will make people more susceptible to joining in, sharing, attending events and ultimately donating to your cause.
3. The spirit of Competition
A great way to spark interest and get people talking about your charity is with a competition. Why not contact schools, nursing homes and local businesses asking them to get involved in fundraising and offer the incentive that if they reach a certain total, they will get a visit from your character for a meet, greet and play session (for example). Alternatively, run a competition where the winners get a visit from your character to host an action packed activity day with all the proceeds from the event going to charity. If you ensure entry to the competition is something that everyone can do with minimal effort, you’ll find people more inclined to join in with the fun.
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