A Warning About Calgary Cosplay

I'm Talking To You!

I wouldn't usually do this kind of thing, but after a personal experience I feel the need to share and hopefully protect others on dA.

Many people have seen clothing by at some point. They have a huge fanbase and a website, canadacosplay.com

They make cosplay hats, hoodies and animal ears. All of their submissions are bombarded with comments of "OMG WANT! Wish I had the money." They are indeed objects of only desire for most people, as they are extremely expensive. Some hoodies cost hundreds of dollars each, and the shipping is pricey. I had assumed that they put a lot of effort in for this money and use quality materials, but after speaking to another deviant it seems that is not the case. She purchased a pair of clip-on cat ears, and the material had been hot-glued to the clips and the glue was messy and stringy, she had to tidy it up herself. Calgary Cosplay pride themselves on their special sewing patterns which make the ears curve naturally, but she claims that the ears stuck above her hair at an odd angle and were generally poorly made. CC do not give refunds, and only allow a few days for a return-swap, which you have to pay postage for.

No business is perfect, and this could be forgiven, if they had addressed the problem or at least apologised. But this is my issue. I was having a discussion with that girl and two other deviants on the page for one of their products, and all of our comments have been deleted. Furthermore, we have all been BLOCKED so we can never post on their page again. The only way in which our comments were addressed by CC was the comment "Haterz gonna hate." Very professional for a business.

So you probably need to know a bit more about what we were saying. I will state now that only ONE of the comments posted between the four of us was aggressive, all other posts were simply discussing opinions and could not be considered harrassment in any way, yet we were all blocked. So, CC had made a voucher, requiring you to draw the item of their clothing that you want to buy, and present it to them at their stall at a convention, and you will get about 10% off that item. It was pointed out by someone else that that is a really shit discount for the effort, but I don't have a problem with that.

My issue was that they had said on the voucher that Calgary Cosplay will own all rights to the picture that you draw and may use it in future, and requested that you put effort into the drawing. My comments simply explained my concerns that the voucher's ulterior motive was to get some free art by good artists, for them to use on labels or their website as advertising. I am fully aware that these suspicions may be incorrect, and if CC had replied with a good reason for their requests, that would have been the end of it. But by deleting my comments, I am now more likely to believe that my concerns were correct. Most of our comments on CC's page were actually about the price of art and advertising and were unrelated to CC, but we did also discuss the fact that CC has been infringing copyrights for a long time. Some of their products are obvious famous copyrighted characters, such as the Chocobo hoodie and Toothless hoodie amongst others. They name these as "Cute yellow chicken hoodie" and "Cute black dragon hoodie" but the designs are very obviously those of the characters and therefore it is still copyright infringement. It is quite amazing that they are still getting away with making so much profit by stealing someone else's designs.

So to sum up, I would like to make people aware of these factors concerning Calgary Cosplay:

- Some products have been poorly made with poor quality materials.
- They have stolen artwork and designs and made huge profits by copyright infringement.
- They block anyone who has an issue with them without addressing the issue.

TL;DR - Think carefully before buying from Calgary Cosplay!

If you have had any kind of experience, good or bad, with Calgary Cosplay, please let me know! I just really felt the need to share these concerns and to make other people aware of this very unprofessional business.

EDIT: After being contacted by a CC customer, I have some information to add from their experience.

- The materials used were soft and did not feel like cheap quality.
- Part of the hoodie design was different to in the image shown on dA. Another customer confirmed this. This is false advertising and is illegal, and future customers should be aware that they might not get what they expect.
- The painted detail on the hoodie, which was one of its selling points, looked very different and much messier than the dA image.
- Overall, the customer had expected much more for their money.
- When the customer commented on this on dA, CC deleted and ignored their comment.

I have also been told about the issue with customs fees. Several people who have received items from CC have had to pay customs fees, and they're not cheap. One person had to pay 120 Euros (about £100/$150) to get their hoodie. When they asked CC to put a warning about this on their page, they were ignored. I believe the only reason CC are not telling people about the customs fees are because they think it would put buyers off and lose them money.