Shortly after announcing its expansion into the costumes segment, Jazwares has established a new costume play division focused on developing licensed costumes.
The new department is tasked with producing costumes for all ages, including dress-up trunks with outfits, masks, and role play accessories for kids’ everyday costume play; cosplay outfits, masks, and accessories suitable for comic conventions; pet costumes; seasonal Halloween decorations; and treat carriers.
Jazwares’ first dress-up trunks and everyday costume play offerings will launch spring 2022. New styles for Halloween 2022 set to arrive at retail include hundreds of costumes, masks, and accessories based on characters from Star Wars, the Marvel multiverse, Spider-Man Spiderverse, and Squishmallows.
Costume industry veteran Stephen Stanley will oversee the department as general manager. Stanley is a co-founder of the Halloween & Costume Association and former co-president of Disguise, who most recently served as managing director of the licensed costume business at Rubie’s Costume Company. He brings over 20 years of experience to the role.
Reporting to Jazwares executive vice president and partner Michael Rinzler, Stanley will lead a team of costumer industry executives that includes divisional design lead Anthea Koveos Rodgers, formerly head of costume design at Disguise and Palamon; Halloween and party senior sales director Michael Esposito, most recently national sales manager at Rubie’s; senior director Thomas Schilling, previously category manager at FunWorld and the Marvel and Star Wars brand manager at Rubie’s; and VP and general manager of Jazwares Costumes in China, Terry Ma, joining the company from his prior role as general manager of Disguise China.
Additionally the team has tapped Angelina Castro as marketing director, Maxwell Lux as senior brand manager, and Daniel Jung as associate brand manager.
“As we continue to grow Jazwares’ offerings into new categories of play from pet toys to costumes, we are thrilled to launch a dedicated division for all things costume play,” said Rinzler. “Stephen has earned an incredible reputation as a leader in the costume business and we are thrilled to welcome him and this tremendous team of industry experts into the Jazwares family.”
The costumer play team is supported by Jazwares executives across multiple areas, including global licensing, sales and planning, design, product management, and development, and Jazwares China.