Chapter 288: Progressive October I: Costumes
Well, October did come eventually and Alexander finally has his moniker to encapsulate what the month is all about.
It’s more on progressing in a lot of things. The months prior had paved the way and October was more on continuing and truly growing from that built momentum.
SDCC was the disseminating start, Stuffed Hobbes was the monumental follow-up, and the next stage was clearly during this October.
In any case, October was all about progress and Progressive October is what it will be.
It isn’t as cool as Inktober and whatnot but Alexander found it fitting nonetheless.
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First on the Progressive October agenda... well, it is simply costumes!
Not much surprise here. This was October and products that are appropriate for this month's activities and festivities are the way to go.
Of course, it's also no surprise that Alexander has a pretty dim view of this whole endeavor.
However, in the name of progress, he overcame that dimness and just found a way to get around it.
After the whole Comic-Con experience, Alexander did take a much-needed retrospection to everything he knew about costumes and costume-esque activities.
By the end of it, he found that Creed Costumes could still be in business but in a specific manner wherein profitability and success could be found.
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By definition, costumes are the distinctive style of dress or cosmetics that an individual or group that reflects class, gender, profession, ethnicity, nationality, activity, or epoch.
Silly costumes are actually embedded and part of culture itself.
A visual "culture" that is practiced in society. A traditional term that describes appropriate clothing for respective events or activities.
Riders need riding costume, swimmers need swimming costumes, dancers needs dancing costume, and so on and so forth.
That general usage has been gradually shifted and eventually replaced by the terms such as uniforms, dress, attire, robes, and wear.
Now, the term "costume" has become more limited to unusual or out-of-date articles of clothing. Attires that intended to evoke a change in identities, such as theatrical, Halloween, and mascot costumes.
Like the market for stuffed toys, it is clear that costumes do have a unique business genre for themselves.
As it turns out, with deep cultural roots, the costume business actually has some very extensively-rooted practitioners. These companies have often been in business for many decades and Alexander actually had an interesting takeaway from their insights whilst flourishing in the costume business.
For those, that are wondering what this different 'costume' business strategy is... it's a costume-catering strategy.
This is a strategy wherein the "costume-r" or "costume designer" works with clients and designs costumes from scratch. They will then create original costumes catering to their client's specifications.
These are the costume companies that are more specified and geared towards truly matching the client's needs.
Their continued work with these individualized clients would eventually lead them to create professional quality costumes.
If it isn't clear yet... it is simply a costume business that makes bulk uniforms, work with theaters and plays, or just generally partners with film production.
This is the type of costume company that creates mascots and general costumes for film, TV, and theatrical plays.
It was totally a different retcon to the Creed Costumes concept that they had wanted to do. Alexander had been doubting this direction a lot but it felt natural for their costume to head that way.
Creed is about re-inforcing various fields, so isn't it just fitting to have the entire Creed costume department be supplementary support to Creed Pictures and its film projects?
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The underwhelmingly-judged Creed Costumes has a chance and Alexander's revamping of it was quite simple.
Creed Costumes just need to go with the unusual way that other "costume companies" had undergone their businesses.
Long story short, Creed Costumes was still a viable thing, and could still breathe a sigh of relief from being wiped out.
Alexander could just the entire endeavor to be axed out of existence but he ultimately decided to chop it up.
The redeeming parts to support a different endeavor... and the leftovers could still stay for what it's worth.
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Of course, this was good and all since an effective alternative is always welcome.
However, with all that has been said, the original Creed Costumes plan actually still stands.
The film-supplementary plan was good however, the option to go with costume sales and the whole costume business still has merit.
In this day and age, professional costume houses still rent and sell costumes for the trade after all.
There are even larger costume companies that have warehouses full of costumes for sale and lending to customers.
Without a doubt, costumes are still a big part of Halloween and that is why Alexander and Old Sullivan knew that they couldn't miss out on it.
Selling something is still better than nothing.
During October and more specifically on Halloween, people can be what they want... or be what they're scared of... or just wear something entertaining.
Many people use Halloween as an opportunity to be what they can't or wouldn't even want to be in their normal life.
Roleplay, cosplay, and whatnot are at their peak during this fall season and Creed's costume offerings should help mix things up.
Hence, a selection of Creed-themed costumes was made available to costume houses and the other costume retailing options that Creed's distribution capabilities can reach.
Of course, the selection has been dialed down from its original offerings and what remained were the costume pieces that were considerably more profitable and had potential.
Goku's new orange gi from Turtle Hermit school was expected to be the best seller but the original blue one should still have potential buyers.
Yautja Masks were in contention and also the new one should add variety to it. Granted, the new Yautja mask was a physical advertisement for the upcoming Predator story itself... so a bonus in a way.
Staying in touch with the mask operation... costume selection actually included the cursed mask from JoJo and the very chic Rorschach inkblot one. They actually offered the color-coded Turtle masked bands as well.
Of course, those were just the ones that Alexander could recall from the top of his head... as the rest were still silly accessories to him.
Oh, and there was actually the Marty skater-look and the Doc Brown lab coat costume sets that should really need to take center stage in this whole costumed affair.
Back to the Future had several special highlights this Progressive October after all and BttF costumes should be quite profitable.
On that note, Calvin's red shirt with black stripes "costume" should be quite parallel to the rise of Hobbes that is still ongoing on the toy end of things. The Calvin look is technically an existing apparel though, so it wouldn't be quite fair to consider it as a costume.
Of course, the most important note in all this polarized look-through in the costume industry was to minimize loss and remain cost-efficient. Everything sold under the Creed Costumes catalog pretty much has that concept in them.
It was still the Creed creed and Alexander hadn't forgotten that.
Progressive October may be about advancing with necessary solutions to the costume problem but having old-school anchoring business ideologies are still a necessity when moving forward.