Talk:Morphsuits

The Wikimedia Foundation's Terms of Use require that editors disclose their "employer, client, and affiliation" with respect to any paid contribution; see WP:PAID. For advice about reviewing paid contributions, see WP:COIRESPONSE. EbenJSteenkamp (talk · contribs) has been paid by VirtuHire (MoonsGate Capital) on behalf of AFG Media Ltd (MorphCostumes brand). Disclosure at User:EbenJSteenkamp

Morphsuits was a Social sciences and society good articles nominee, but did not meet the good article criteria at the time. There may be suggestions below for improving the article. Once these issues have been addressed, the article can be renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake.

Article milestones Date Process Result December 6, 2011 Peer review Reviewed April 3, 2012 Good article nominee Not listed February 11, 2018 Good article nominee Not listed A fact from this article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the "Did you know?" column on November 7, 2011. The text of the entry was: Did you know ... that all employment for Morphsuits spandex bodysuits is outsourced except for three positions? Current status: Former good article nominee

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Fashion Low‑importance This article is within the scope of WikiProject Fashion, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Fashion on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.FashionWikipedia:WikiProject FashionTemplate:WikiProject Fashionfashion Low This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale. Brands This article is within the scope of WikiProject Brands, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of brands on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.BrandsWikipedia:WikiProject BrandsTemplate:WikiProject BrandsBrands ??? This article has not yet received a rating on the project's importance scale.

Morphsuits trio urge tax changes to help growth http://business.scotsman.com/retail/Morphsuits-trio-urge-tax-changes.6838087.jp

Morphsuit madness at Drayton Manor http://www.sundaymercury.net/news/midlands-news/2011/05/07/morphsuit-madness-at-drayton-manor-66331-28653097/

Flagging some patriotic fashion http://www.heraldsun.com.au/ipad/flagging-some-patriotic-fashion/story-fn6bfmgc-1225992966594

Don't be fooled: April 1 is Swatch Zebra Day at Rockwell Mall http://www.philstar.com/Article.aspx?articleId=671114&publicationSubCategoryId=83

http://www.ayus-zentai.com/forum/showthread.php?740-Morphsuits-General-Feedback

Dress to impress this Halloween http://www.mediasearch.com.au/fashion/wrap/morphsuits-halloween

Friends morph into potential tycoons http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/article-1706816/Friends-morph-into-potential-tycoons.html

http://www.facebook.com/topic.php?uid=121309431246644&topic=294

Mighty Morphsuit power rages on the street http://www.theage.com.au/national/mighty-morphsuit-power-rages-on-the-street-20100911-1561u.html

Music festival fashion morphs into mystery http://www.news.com.au/entertainment/music/music-festival-fashion-morphs-into-mystery/story-e6frfn0r-1225993543982 https://www.companiesintheuk.co.uk/company/documentextract/45673795 http://levelbusiness.com/doc/company/uk/SC323753 http://www.cdrex.com/afg-media-ltd-203699.html http://www.ey.com/Publication/vwLUAssets/EoY_-_Scotland_award_recipients/$FILE/EY_EOY_Scotland_award_recipients.pdf

Marvels in Morphsuits http://www.bq-magazine.co.uk/entrepreneur/scot/marvels-in-morphsuits/

As a Talk Page topic further down the page has it Seems basically an ad. What possible justification can there be for inclusion of all these weblinks?

Nuttyskin (talk) 23:26, 9 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

Article (edit | visual edit | history) · Article talk (edit | history) · Watch • Watch peer review

This peer review discussion has been closed.
Looking to worth this article into shape, looking for advice. Thanks! -- Zanimum (talk) 15:31, 25 November 2011 (UTC)Reply

Comments from Jappalang

Lede

• "It distributes branded spandex costumes, based on the existing zentai concept."

  I see a few faults with this statement. There is imprecision in casting the concept as "existing"; is this idea constantly changing? If so, which version is this suit based on? Is "existing" still valid three months from now? A sole link to "zentai" is not really a good move. Readers may find that article more interesting and never come back to this one. Explain here what is zentai, e.g. "based on the Japanese concept of full-body tights (zentai)." Readers will go there if they are more interested in zentai, but at least those who are willing to read Morphsuits first would not be lured away.

  I've removed the word "concept", reformatted the sentence.

  You have created a red-link, skin-tight garments. Is that another name for "full-body tights"? Are you planning to turn the link blue (create the article)?

  Oops, fixed. -- Zanimum (talk) 14:12, 23 December 2011 (UTC)Reply

• "As of May 2011, it claims to be the world's largest fancy dress brand."

  I do not think that even directly expressing such claims as the company's own would befit WP:NPOV. "World's largest" is simply too controversial to leave it as a primary claim. A secondary reliable source is definitely needed in my view.

  I've moved it down to the corporate section.

  The concerns still remains, regardless of where it is stated. I do not believe such claims of performance are encyclopaedic if there are no supporting secondary sources. Jappalang (talk) 13:34, 20 December 2011 (UTC)Reply

• "The trio had jobs at Barclays, Procter & Gamble, and BT, which they left after the first year."

  After their first year at the job, or one year after setting up Morphsuits?

  Clarified.

History

• "... which a friend was wearing a zentai bodysuit. At the event, the friend became somewhat of a celebrity, ... Researching the fancy dress market, the friends invested ..."

  Who exactly is the "friend"? If he is part of "the friends", why is he not identified?

  They have never publicly identified the friend, but it was not one of the three founders.

  If he is not one of the founders, then that creates a problem. He is now confused as being one of "the friends". "The friends" should be clarified as to who are they. Jappalang (talk) 03:46, 14 December 2011 (UTC)Reply

  Reworded. -- Zanimum (talk) 14:12, 23 December 2011 (UTC)Reply

• "The moniker of "Morphsuits" stemmed from the fact that 'we noticed that everyone who wore them morphed into a more fun version of themselves', says Fraser Smeaton."

  This demands a rephrase in my view. In its current structure, the article is stating Smeaton's opinion as "fact" ("stemmed from the fact"). This is not true. It is just the opinion of the suit's creators that people "morphed into a more fun version of themselves".

  Fixed. -- Zanimum (talk) 14:12, 23 December 2011 (UTC)Reply

  Better in tone but the "... that ... that ..." is sort of repetitive. I boldly went and tweaked it. Jappalang (talk) 01:35, 24 December 2011 (UTC)Reply

• "a lot of 2 a.m. finishes"

  Finishes in what?

  Clarified.

• "Since then outsourcing has raised their indirect staffing to 200 as of August 2011."

  "Since then" is redundant when you have "as of xxxxx".

  Reworded.

• "One early boost to their sales was eight red Morphsuit wearers ..."

  The sale of eight red Morphsuits boosted their sales?

  Reword, two sentences into one.

  I think the change is a bit awkward. Suggestion: "The company received a boost to its sales when its products were spotted in the sports coverage of 2009 British Lions tour of South Africa; shots of eight prominent fans in red Morphsuits among the crowd were featured in the newspaper photographs and on television."

  I apologise for leaving a incomplete suggestion, but care and independent decision should have been taken. The current statement "The company received a boost to its sales when sports coverage of the 2009 British Lions tour of South Africa, at which eight fans wearing red Morphsuits, which covered extensively by sports journalists and photographers." is quite awkward. Jappalang (talk) 13:34, 20 December 2011 (UTC)Reply

• "... North America in fact weren't their brand ..."

  "In fact" is not needed and is discouraged in encyclopaedic writing. So too is the use of contractions.

  Changed both occurrences.

  There is still a contraction elsewhere in the article. Jappalang (talk) 03:46, 14 December 2011 (UTC)Reply

  Would you mind identifying where? As far as I know, the only time apostrophes are used in the article are for posessive pluralizations and for the title of a television series. -- Zanimum (talk) 14:14, 23 December 2011 (UTC)Reply

Corporate

• "Trained with "FMCG marketing" at Gillette and later Proctor and Gamble, leading marketing on Pantene, Pringles, and Gillette."

  This sentence is incomplete; it has no main clause.

  Reworded.

  Please check the tenses ("he lead marketing"?). Jappalang (talk) 03:46, 14 December 2011 (UTC)Reply

  Fixed.

• "Lawson is brother of Rory Lawson, son of Alan Lawson, and grandson of Bill McLaren."

  What pertinence does this relationship have with Morphsuits?

  Early association of the items was with sporting events. Fair enough? I've clarified their backgrounds.

  No. I see nowhere in the article that states their marketing strategy involves targeting sporting events or the participants. Jappalang (talk) 03:46, 14 December 2011 (UTC)Reply

• What does "sell up" mean?

  To allow an acquisition. Clarified.

  Linking "sell their company" to takeover is ill-advised per WP:EASTEREGG (a sell-out is also not a takeover). Remove the link (or clarifying what is this actually suppose to mean) and this issue would be resolved. Jappalang (talk) 03:46, 14 December 2011 (UTC)Reply

• "The company has had overtures from private equity investors in mid-to-late-2011, since their Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Awards nomination in Scotland;"

  The current sentence should be rephrased; it is not clear what "mid-to-late-2011" refers to.

  Rephrased.

  When was the company nominated for Entrepreneur of the Year? Jappalang (talk) 13:34, 20 December 2011 (UTC)Reply

• "the company suggests that they're too busy to pay much attention ..."

  Again, ditch the contractions. Also the usage of mass noun is consistent. Either use single or plural throughout a sentence, not flip-flopping like in here.

  How's the new sentence "they have suggested the business has kept them too busy to consider any of the offers."?

• Please interpret the source and present its information in terms the layman would better understand. Does "return rate" refer to the profit they receive from selling a suit or the number of products returned by the distributors (for what reasons)? What is "SKU"?

  I've tried to clarify, but this was intended to be a business article.

  It is not supposed to be a business article. According to the project's aims, it is supposed to be an encyclopaedic article about a business and is accessible (readable) to the layman. Jappalang (talk) 03:46, 14 December 2011 (UTC)Reply

Marketing

• I fail to understand "Within photos, 'firsts' are a common occurence."

  Clarified.

  Eh... I see the fragment of a sentence, "Many wearers of"; I presume this is the intended clarification. Where is the rest of it? Jappalang (talk) 03:46, 14 December 2011 (UTC)Reply

  "Many wearers of" has been removed, but I see nothing to resolve the original concern. Jappalang (talk) 13:34, 20 December 2011 (UTC)Reply

• "In reference to rugby, they have described their technique as 'scrum marketing'."

  What is "their technique"? As far as I can tell, nothing was elaborated about it. Earlier sentences as summarized is simply "The company has a Facebook page with competitions." How does this tally with the image of rugby scrums?

  Deleted the sentence.

• "Being one of the earliest brands to court a general market, the terms "Morphsuits" and "morphs" regularly are applied to events related to any sort of zentai suit."

  The reference (from The Sun) does not support the first clause. The second clause is also not borne out by this source (The Sun uses the terms but does not state them as regular uses).

The article fails to note the founding date of the company (the BBC article would point it as 2009). Are there any criticisms over their products? I understand that as a recent company, it has comparatively less attention and history than more established companies; as such, the article may not be "broad" in coverage in terms of WP:WIAGA, but this article cab be improved by polishing the language and presentation. Jappalang (talk) 03:05, 6 December 2011 (UTC)Reply

With regards to this edit, most of which was reverted, the positive, mainstream publicity zentai received through usage of non-Morphsuit outfits is forever linked to the success of the Morphsuit brand. I'm sorry, it just is, and this content needs to stay. -- Zanimum (talk) 18:45, 25 March 2012 (UTC)Reply

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It looks like several revisions ago, this article was recreated at Morphsuit, which had previously redirected here. Any differences in content should be incorporated into this article, since it's the company's proper name.

Furthermore, because of past redirects, Talk:Morphsuit redirects to Talk:Zentai; that should be be cleaned up as well. I'm guessing there might be some other funky bits with these three articles and their talk pages and mismatched redirects, with possibly some other pages involved as well, because this isn't the first time I've seen something like this; but I'm not able to do any investigating or fixing myself, right now. B7T (talk)

• Okay, since the differences between the two articles were minor and seemed more accurate here, I redirected Morphsuit to this article, and Talk:Morphsuit to this talk page. I put in a history merge request on this article, and a note about the possible talk page problem at Wikipedia:Requests for history merge#Repair requests. Hopefully, that should solve the issue. B7T (talk) 09:13, 22 October 2016 (UTC)Reply

This review is transcluded from Talk:Morphsuits/GA2. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: Mike Christie (talk · contribs) 13:55, 28 January 2018 (UTC)Reply

I'll review this. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 13:55, 28 January 2018 (UTC)Reply

I'll copyedit as I go; please revert as needed.

• There are some dead links: see here.
• Any particular reason to include citations in the lead? It's not a problem for GA, but it's not necessary in the lead except for controversial statements and direct quotes.
• The year of founding is not in the lead, and only implied in the body by the shipping date of the first product.
• Three sentences in two paragraphs in the lead is not a good look; for an article this long one (or at most two) paragraphs would suffice; and we should avoid single-sentence paragraphs if at all possible.
• They are working on a womenswear line: This is cited to a 2012 source; I'd either remove this or, if you can bring it up to date, give current details, along with an "As of 2018" qualifier. And doesn't this duplicate "Expansion plans include...female-targeted accessories"? The same thing applies to that sentence in any case, since that's a 2011 source.
• The relationship with AFG Media is unclear in the lead. From looking through the rest of the article I think AFG Media is the same three people who founded Morphsuits, but this should be clear when you mention the company. The body of the article doesn't clarify this either.
• The data in the infobox needs to be cited.

  Striking this; not sure why I thought this. So long as the information is cited elsewhere it's fine not to cite it in the infobox. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 15:18, 28 January 2018 (UTC)Reply

• You have "recently" in the lead; this needs an "as of" qualifier.
• The lead should include only material that's in the body, so I would expand the start of the "History" section a little to include the full names of the three founders and mention Edinburgh; and the body of the article should also mention them leaving their jobs.
• What's the point of the paragraph starting "Early mainstream appearances"? It doesn't seem to belong here; none of the sources mention Morphsuits. Someone has put an "improper synthesis" tag on the paragraph and I agree.
• The article says the eight fans in Morphsuits following the British Lions tour in South Africa were "covered extensively" in the press; I can't find any coverage at all. Does the source support "extensively"?
• As of August 2011, there were 40 varieties, and 50 as of September 2011: rather than having two old data points, can we have a current data point?
• As of April 2013, stated it expected: something is wrong here.
• With their investment from BFG: this is phrased as though the reader already knows about the investment, whcih is not the case. And who is BFG?
• This is not an issue for GA, but FYI you have an access-date on footnote 9 which is pointless since there is no URL.
• As of May 2011, it claimed to be the world's largest fancy dress brand: I think this sort of claim is probably best omitted without a better source; I understand that the article just says they claim it, but it's not really a notable fact unless it's true, in which case we need a better source.
• The biographical information on Lawson in the "Corporate" section would make more sense in the "History" section, where the sequence of events could be integrated with the dates you give there.
• Almost all of the "Corporate" section needs to be reworked as it refers to old information. In some cases new information needs to be substituted. There are also statements that are in the future tense but no longer should be, or which should be removed -- e.g. The company expect sales of £309,980 in October 2012.
• Similar comments apply to the first sentences of the "Marketing" section.
• The sentence about the tutu is based on a 2011 source and should no longer be forward-looking; we should know by now what happened.
• There's no mention in the linked zentai article of fetishism, so the first time a reader can find out that that's an issue is when you say The brand has tried to distance itself from the term zentai, and the concept of fetish usage near the end of the article, which comes as a surprise. Can we explain the issue before we give the solution? E.g. "Zentai suits are sometimes associated with spandex fetishism, and the brand has tried to distance itself from this concept", assuming that we can source the first part of that statement reliably.
• The last sentence is unsourced.

Overall this is quite a long way from GA, and I doubt it can be fixed in the time frame of a GA review. However, you've been waiting a long time for the review, so I'll place the article on hold until you get a chance to respond. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 14:41, 28 January 2018 (UTC)Reply

Zanimum, are you planning to work on this article? If there's no progress in another week I'll fail the article. If you need more time, just let me know. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 15:33, 4 February 2018 (UTC)Reply

I'm failing this as there has been no progress. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 10:54, 11 February 2018 (UTC)Reply

Not really an encyclopedia article Jamesks (talk) 08:37, 30 August 2024 (UTC)Reply

What else could be the explanation? That a company which, it has already been stated, is based in Edinburgh; is represented in terms of its online presence, with its URL for the US market. Nuttyskin (talk) 23:20, 9 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

The user below has a request that an edit be made to Morphsuits. That user has an actual or apparent conflict of interest. The requested edits backlog is very high. Please be extremely patient. There are currently 610 requests waiting for review. Please read the instructions for the parameters used by this template for accepting and declining them, and review the request below and make the edit if it is well sourced, neutral, and follows other Wikipedia guidelines and policies.

Hi Wikipedians,

The revenue in the infobox (£4.5m) comes from a 2011 BBC source, so it's about 15 years old now. The most recent figure I can find in an independent source is £33.1m for 2022, reported by The Scotsman. Could someone swap the field to that, citing:

£33.1 million (2022)^[1]

The BBC reference is used elsewhere in the article, so taking it off the revenue field won't break anything.

I'm a paid editor, disclosure on my user page. Not touching the article directly, just flagging it here.

EbenJSteenkamp (talk) 07:09, 8 June 2026 (UTC)Reply

EbenJSteenkamp (talk) 07:09, 8 June 2026 (UTC)Reply

Hi again,

A few things in the article are well out of date and could probably just be tidied. None of this is about adding anything flattering, it's mostly the opposite: old projections that never got updated. Flagging here rather than editing myself (paid editor, disclosure on my user page).

1. The lead doesn't say when the company started. It was 2009. Source: Sieg, Jennifer (29 October 2024), "How we morphed a party outfit into a multi-million pound costume business", City AM, https://www.cityam.com/how-we-morphed-a-party-outfit-into-a-multi-million-pound-costume-business/ . Could the year be added to the first paragraph?
2. There are a few forward-looking financial lines that are long past the period they refer to and read strangely now:
   • "They expect £10.5m in revenue in the 2011-2012 fiscal year"
   • "The company expect sales of £309,980 in October 2012"
   • "As of April 2013, the company stated it expected MorphKids to outstrip the parent brand four-fold"
   • the bit about hoping to pursue the Spider-Man licence "with their investment from BFG"These are all 12 to 13 years old and about periods that have passed, so I'd suggest just removing them.
3. "As of May 2011, it claimed to be the world's largest fancy dress brand" is an old self-claim with no independent source behind it. I think it's better out, but I'll leave that to your judgement.

No rush on any of this. I grouped it so it's one lot rather than several separate notes. (There's also my earlier request above about the infobox revenue figure.)

Thanks EbenJSteenkamp (talk) 14:12, 18 June 2026 (UTC)Reply