The senior appointments at Disguise will spearhead the development of an EMEA team across sales, design and marketing. 

Disguise, a division of toy and consumer products manufacturer, Jakks Pacific, has announced the organization of its senior leadership team in EMEA. Industry veterans Tony Lewis and Lynda Morris have joined the company, heading up expansion and recruitment efforts to build an EMEA team of costume experts across sales, design and marketing, based in the UK.

“We are excited to continue to expand our presence in EMEA. An enhanced dress up and role play line is a natural complement to our strong toy portfolio,” said Dan Cooney, EVP Jakks Pacific.

David Carscadden, currently the managing director of Jakks EMEA, and 12-year executive at Jakks will now lead both Disguise and Jakks teams in EMEA, focusing on strengthening distribution channels and retail partnerships for Disguise’s vast range of costumes and fancy dress as well as leveraging Jakks’ expertise in role play and dress up. The UK based teams will be led by Tony Lewis for sales and marketing and Lynda Morris for design and development.

Sales and marketing director in EMEA, Tony Lewis, is a costume industry veteran with 30 years of experience at companies like Christy’s, Amscan and Character World. Tony brings extensive expertise to the Disguise division, working closely with Jakks to build and develop retailer and buyer relationships across the whole of Europe, while growing the list of dress up clients for both Disguise and the Jakks team. He heads up all forecasting, planning and joint ventures as well regional and local sales teams, building and developing the customer and wider distribution base. He is currently recruiting an experienced costume sales and business development team for the UK & EMEA.

Lynda Morris brings decades of design and management experience within the children and adult apparel space as well as seven years experience in Halloween with Rubie’s to her role as Design lead for UK and EMEA. She will work in tandem with Tony and the Jakks teams on forecasting, safety testing and presenting concepts and styles to licensors and customers. She has also been tasked with building a creative and development team in the UK to work on design this year and production in 2022. Her team will be creating innovative styles for Disguise’s existing and new licences.

“This year we have been focused on maximizing our existing licences and building structure for new brand acquisitions, to be announced soon, ” said Tara Hefter, president and GM of Disguise, Inc. “With the recent awards of some large licences with a global scope, it made sense to hire in industry talent and start growing our team now. With Tony and Lynda leading the business, we have the groundwork ready to develop and expand into new regions and countries quickly. We can activate faster on new licences and brands and bring these incredible new costumes and accessories to retail for all major dress up holidays in EMEA.”