Calgary company takes cosplay world by storm

Calgary business has a hit with cosplay community A Calgary business has connected with the cosplay community and orders are pouring in. Kevin Green reports

CALGARY — Aeronautical-engineer-turned-movie-props-maker Ben Eadie likes cosplay. Specifically he likes creating cosplay costumes of the sort that draw attention at the local comic expo.

One day, while working on a project that involved sewing, Eadie noticed some crochet stitching that turned his head.

“I'm like, wait a minute, if I link those two zigzags together, if they were like, not a noodley thread, but something solid, it might look like chainmail," said Eadie. “So I thought ‘I've got a laser cutter. Let's just cut a couple samples out and see how it goes. And it worked. Like it immediately looked like chainmail.  I get goosebumps thinking about that moment.”

That sparked the founding of Foam Armory. (foamarmory.com ) Along with partner Stephanie Chan, the company makes and sells realistic-looking, lightweight foam chain mail to cosplay enthusiasts around the world.

“One of the earliest people who was most interested in our product was actually a fellow named Adam Savage, you might know him from Mythbusters. He works in movies as a as a movie prop master and when he caught wind of this, he immediately took to his podcast “Tested” and featured us” said Chan, noting that appearance on Savage’s YouuTbe channel caused a spike in orders that hasn’t let up.

“After Ben's appearance on “Tested”, I would say the next weekend after that we had about 300 sales immediately.”

That turned their hobby business into an international mail order company almost overnight.

“We were blown away by how many orders (we got)," said Eadie. "We were originally laser cutting the foam and we couldn't keep up with the orders because laser cutting wasn't fast enough."

“I started looking at die cutting," he said. "We've got it so that it works quite fast, but we would like it to be faster yet.  Demand right now is at a comfortable level, but given the sort of bursts that we have, I think the next jump will be another one of those scramble moments."

NEXT JUMP

That next jump appears to be right around the corner. Eadie and Chan have developed a method of creating foam scaillemaille (scale mail) armour.  Scaillemaille is created from linked pieces of armour resembling fish, or lizard scales, and is a mainstay of movie costumes seen in films ranging from The Lord of the Rings to Captain America.

A Kickstarter campaign launching the new foam scaillemaille blew through its targets and proved just how popular the product would be.

“We originally set the goal to $5,000 just to grow the business a little bit, and get more materials. We were blown away because our total came out to over $47,000 at the end," said Chan. “It's a very exciting market. It's a little bit of a niche market, but at the same time, I think that we are able to empower cosplayers, movie prop makers, theater production people, and costume makers with our product.”

Chan still churns out the foam armour on a hand cranked die cutter.  Cosplayers who purchase it get sheets of the precut links that they can assemble into the armour piece of their choice.

Online videos offer instructions to create the most popular items.

“I could see us doing more kits because right now we just sell component parts," said Chan. “We want to expand into doing kits, as well as alternate materials like leather or stronger foams.”

As Foam Armory branches into other materials it's also eyeing new markets beyond cosplay.

“I think the actual growth market that will have like a real impact might be moving into fashion. People have approached me and said, Hey, could we make more bike jacket out of this?” said Eadie “We've taken the scaillemaille, and as a preliminary test, we cut it out a leather, wove it together, we put a five-pound weight on it, and we dragged around the parking lot to find out, ‘is this going to rip apart? And surprisingly, it stood up way, way better than I thought it would.’”

Meanwhile there is still a lot of room to grow within cosplay market. In 2017 the international cosplay market for costumes and wigs was estimated t a whopping $17 billion.  A survey done that year by Cosplay Calamity  that year also found 70 per cent of cosplayers spend an average of US $101-$600 per costume, with many spending over US $1000.  The same survey found most cosplay enthusiasts also have more than one outfit.