Your First Stop on the Way to Cosplay Excellence!
Our Vision Statement:
Our Mission:
To identify the existing barriers to cosplay that prevent both aspiring and existing cosplayers from making their own costumes, and find ways to break down those barriers and help people make costumes themselves!
Our Vision:
Create products that allow aspiring cosplayers to make their own costumes by learning new skills and improving on what they already know!
Welcome to First Stop Cosplay, where we make every stitch count and every pattern piece a stepping stone to your dream creation. Based in Irvine, California, founded in 2019, we are a small but mighty squad of passionate individuals, dedicated to providing all the perks of a big company through the tender loving care of a close-knit team. It is our mission to dismantle any obstacles that stand between aspiring or experienced cosplayers and the joyous art of sewing.
Our vision in starting First Stop Cosplay is to create products that allow aspiring and existing cosplayers to make their own costumes by learning new skills and improving upon what they already know.
What We Stand For
We refuse to be just another cosplay company that sells pre-made costumes because we understand the value of creating your cosplay yourself. We’ve experienced all the good and bad that comes with making a cosplay. We’ve shed tears over stupid mistakes and malfunctioning sewing machines, and shed blood because of rogue fabric shears and wayward sewing needles.
But we’ve also celebrated finding the perfect fabric in the perfect color and barely finishing in time for the next convention. And we’ve basked in the gratifying glory of wearing that new cosplay confident inthe knowledge that it is absolute perfection. It may not be a perfect cosplay to someone else, but it is perfect to us because we made it ourselves.
We know firsthand how difficult it is to get started on making a cosplay and, even after you have, how hard it is to improve your skills. We believe that anyone who wants to cosplay should be able to. That is why we aim to ensure that a lack of knowledge will never again be a reason standing in someone's way.
We stand for cosplays that you are proud to wear because they fit you just right and are as accurate as you want them to be. We stand for tears of joy instead of tears of frustration, for pride in a job well done, and for having fun wearing a cosplay that you made yourself.
We stand for you!
How We Got Our Start
First Stop Cosplay was founded in the summer of 2019 by Amanda “Mari” Gregory in Los Angeles, CA. She holds degrees in fashion design and theater costume design (Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising), humanities (East Los Angeles College), and business administration with an emphasis in entrepreneurship (Chapman University).
She made her first cosplay back in 2007and has been making new ones ever since. A self-dubbed ‘equal opportunity cosplayer,’ Amanda believes that anyone who wants to cosplay should be able to, and that belief is the base of everything that First Stop Cosplay stands for. However, she kept meeting people who said that they wanted to cosplay but didn’t know what to do or how to improve. Finally, sick of not knowing how to help, Amanda decided to take matters into her own hands. And so, First Stop Cosplay was born!
Behind Our Name
“Several years ago, I helped one of my best friends, Jun, make her first cosplay. Whenever I could, I would try to explain to her what I was doing and teach her how to do it herself. It always caught me off guard how excited she got whenever I showed her how to do something new.
Take, for example, her sheer delight at learning not only how simple it is to make a pleated skirt, but also how to iron in the pleats by herself. The idea that a pleated skirt is one of the easiest garments to make by yourself is something that I have long considered as fact. But watching her happily iron away at that pleated skirt—by seeing the construction of a cosplay through her eyes—made me realize just how many things I take for granted.
I already knew at this point that I wanted to open my own cosplay store one day. Originally, I wanted it to serve as a one-stop-shop for all things related to cosplay, and I planned to name the store ‘One Stop Cosplay.’
That all changed, however, when Jun put on her completed cosplay for the very first time: she saw herself in the mirror, turned around to look at me, and the pure joy on her face—the way she positively beamed—absolutely stunned me. That was the moment I realized that I don’t want to sell people cosplays; I want to help them make their own.
I believe that cosplay is more than just the finished costume. I believe that it is an experience, one that starts the second that someone decides on a character, and that continues long after construction on the costume has finished.
Once I realized that what I really wanted to do was to find ways to help people make their own cosplay, I immediately knew that I didn’t want my future store to be any cosplayer’s only stop. Instead, I wanted it to be their starting place, the first stop among many on the road to making their cosplay by themselves. And thus, ‘One Stop Cosplay’ was changed to ‘First Stop Cosplay.’
However, although First Stop Cosplay is meant to be the first stop among many, we will still gladly follow and support any and every cosplayer during the rest of their journey.”
- Amanda Mari Gregory (Founder)
