creative education canada

Headquarters -

704 Mara Street, Point Edward, Ontario, N7V 1X4

Year established -

339930 - Doll, toy and game manufacturing

Major expansions -

Employees -

Creative Education of Canada

Creative Education of Canada manufactures educational toys and costumes for children. Most notably, the firm produces Great Pretenders’ award-winning dress-up costumes.

When Joyce Keelan, founder and chief executive officer of Creative Education of Canada, graduated from Queens University with a mechanical engineering degree, she never imagined that she would one day head a dress-up costume and toy manufacturing firm. However, like Keelan’s first product named Pic-A-Puppet, the decision fit. After several years working in both the oil and gas and tool and die industries, Keelan had enough. Self-identifying as a “corporate refugee,” she vowed never again to work for anyone but herself. During her time away from the corporate world, while searching for fun, educational toys for her daughters, she came to another realization: the toy industry had even less to offer her and her family than corporate life.

This dissatisfaction led to the creation of Pic-A-Puppet, an award-winning product that sparked the inception of Keelan’s company, Creative Education of Canada (Creative Education), in 1989. Realizing that the toy was extremely popular among her family and friends, Keelan decided her next task was to secure a buyer; yet this proved more difficult than originally anticipated. Having minimal interest from big buyers during the first year of operations was reflected in the company’s sales, which grossed roughly $40,000, with all production being run out of house. Today, Creative Education has long since discontinued the Pic-A-Puppet. Instead, it offers a wide variety of product lines, with operations run out of a manufacturing facility in Sarnia and sales in the $10–$20 million range.

The magnitude of Creative Education’s growth since inception can be attributed primarily to Keelan’s hard work and commitment to the company’s goals of (1) providing quality toys that promote creative, interactive play for the end consumer, (2) maintaining a positive and fun company/work environment, and (3) producing profits for shareholders (a clear by-product stemming from the focus on quality merchandise and a successful work environment).

While sales have not always seen the exponential increase experienced in the company’s infancy, Creative Education maintains a healthy growth of roughly 11 percent each year.

The key to the company's organic growth lies in understanding and expanding its customer base.

Creative Education caters to upper-class, high-end consumers, most notably via Pottery Barn Kids and Indigo, where it enjoys co-branding with many of those companies’ product lines. Capitalizing on the recent “buy local” trend, Creative Education has always produced a large volume of their sales in Canada, with the breakdown being roughly 25 percent of the company’s total sales. However, in order to achieve the company’s ambition of obtaining a large revenue stream, Keelan knew that other markets needed to be tapped. The most obvious candidate was the United States, with U.S. exports now representing 50 percent of Creative Education’s sales, and the remaining 25 percent being distributed to European markets.

Creative Education’s distribution pattern is mainly reflected through its marketing strategy. Tradeshows are the company’s main marketing vehicle, providing a key platform to network and gain exposure to potential customers across various markets. The New York Toy Fair and Spielwarenmesse International Toy Fair Nürnberg are among the largest events of their kind in the world, and Creative Education is a regular exhibitor at both. Creative Education’s attendance at these shows coincided directly with the company’s strategy of growing its flagship brand, Great Pretenders, and pursuing continual market expansion. In 2014, the firm sought to expand by focusing on the infant market with the introduction of the Meiya and Alvin collection. In other markets, it has pursued innovation, with new “Do it Yourself” and “Colour In” costume product lines being unveiled.

In order to drive these operations, Creative Education employs 43 personnel with 35 full-time employees located in Sarnia, Ontario, and the rest spread across North America and Europe. The average employee has either a college or university background in a multitude of specialties, such as fashion, sales, customer service, and creative design.

Oftentimes, businesses’ success is greatly influenced by the role of the government, and this is certainly true in Creative Education’s case. The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) allows Creative Education to ship anywhere in North America duty-free, avoiding costs anywhere in the range of 16 to 40 percent. These savings are extremely advantageous, especially when considering other areas of government intervention that result in high costs. One such area is in safety legislation. Compliance with the Consumer Product Safety Inspection Act (CPSIA) also requires proof of compliance with a third-party test report; this requirement, coupled with the fact that these standards are not recognized in other countries, results in a huge hit to Creative Education’s bottom line— over $150,000 in 2016 alone. However, arguably, this investment pays off: in 30 years Creative Education has never had a recall, attesting to the notion that products made in Canada are, in fact, better.

For more information about Creative Education of Canada, visit their website .

Published: May 31, 2016

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The Creative School offers research, education and innovation in media and communication, design and the creative industries spanning across nine schools and 27 programs that have been identified as the top in their field both nationally and internationally.

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In the beginning, our Great Pretenders story starts simply. Once upon a time, there was a mom troubled by the lack of fun and imaginative toys for her children. Joyce Keelan set out on her ambitious journey to come up with creative, pretend-play toys designed to empower children and spark imagination. Now, 34 years later, our family business has expanded. The kids that inspired her brand now work (or play) in and with the business. Her grand-kids grace the covers and make the occasional guest appearance on social media. One thing is for sure, everyone at Great Pretenders is excited to see the continued global reach of our product, and is continually impressed with our inspiring founder and the OG mom of Great Pretenders!

MISSION & VISION

Our mission is to design and produce products that inspire families to engage in creative, imaginative and interactive play. We strive to provide our customers with safe, quality and creative toys and gifts while exceeding our customer’s expectations at every opportunity. 

We design and manufacture safe, award-winning dress-up, toys, jewellery, and accessories. 

FAMILY FIRST

Creative Education of Canada is a family owned and operated business started in 1989. In the early days, costumes were produced in the basement of the family home, and Joyce traveled to craft fairs and trade shows to promote her products and ideas. Now, CFO Joyce Keelan oversees our team with offices in 5 countries and 4 global warehouses. She still designs many of our products and is the beating heart of the company. Her oldest and youngest children have followed in her footsteps and are proud to have contributed to the business' expansion, along side our 60+ employees worldwide.

We are a small but dynamic group of people (and dogs!) here at Creative Education of Canada, home of Great Pretenders. We have designers with a love of children, fantasy and fabric, complemented by graphic artists, painters, and pattern makers. Talented cutters and sewers bring designs to life, and our logistics team makes sure our products are held to rigid safety standards. Reliable shippers and a dedicated warehouse team manage to keep our orders all-straight (even in crazy months), making sure the right products get to the right places. Plus, an amazing administrative group who dot the ‘i’s and cross the ‘t’s. We are a lot of things, but mostly, we are all incredibly dedicated to our jobs, and co-workers. Every part of our process is important and recognized. 

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Creative Writers are at the heart of our cultural industries. Poets, novelists, screenwriters, playwrights, graphic novelists, magazine writers: they entertain, inform and inspire. For more than 15 years, UBC's Creative Writing program has been educating writers through distance education in a program which complements our long-standing on-campus MFA program.

A studio program with the writing workshop at its heart, the distance MFA focuses on the work created by students as the primary text. Through intensive peer critique and craft discussion, faculty and students work together with the same goal: literary excellence.

The MFA granted to distance students is the same degree as granted to on-campus students, and the same criteria of excellence in multiple genres of study apply.

For specific program requirements, please refer to the departmental program website

What makes the program unique?

UBC's Optional-Residency (Distance) MFA was the first distance education MFA program in Canada and remains the only full MFA which can be taken completely online. It is designed to be uniquely flexible, allowing students across Canada and around the world to study writing at the graduate level while still living in their local communities and fulfilling career and family obligations.

The program is unique globally for its multi-genre approach to writing instruction: students are required to work in multiple genres during the course of the degree. As a fine arts program rather than an English program, students focus on the practice of writing rather than the study of literature. Students may work on a part-time basis, taking up to five years to complete the degree.

My time in the Creative writing grad program at UBC has given me the discipline and focus I need to complete long-form writing pieces and larger poetry projects.

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TOEFL: Test of English as a Foreign Language - internet-based

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The GRE is not required.

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Instructions regarding thesis supervisor contact for Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing (Distance) (MFA)

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Graduate programs may have Teaching Assistantships available for registered full-time graduate students. Full teaching assistantships involve 12 hours work per week in preparation, lecturing, or laboratory instruction although many graduate programs offer partial TA appointments at less than 12 hours per week. Teaching assistantship rates are set by collective bargaining between the University and the Teaching Assistants' Union .

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A good starting point to explore student jobs is the UBC Work Learn program or a Co-Op placement .

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Career Options

Graduates of the MFA program have found success in varied fields related to writing and communication. The MFA qualifies graduates for teaching at the university level and many graduates have gone on to teach at colleges and universities in Canada, the United States and overseas as well as holding writing residencies. Many publish books and win literary awards. Others go on to work in publishing, and graduates have become book and magazine editors.

Although the MFA is a terminal degree, some graduates go on to further study in PhD programs in the US, UK and Australia.

The Optional-Residency MFA is particularly well suited to teachers: our teacher-students have been able to gain an advanced degree while continuing their careers.

• Research Supervisors

This list shows faculty members with full supervisory privileges who are affiliated with this program. It is not a comprehensive list of all potential supervisors as faculty from other programs or faculty members without full supervisory privileges can request approvals to supervise graduate students in this program.

• Belcourt, Billy-Ray (Fiction; Nonfiction; Poetry)
• Hopkinson, Nalo (Creative writing, n.e.c.; Humanities and the arts; Creative Writing: Speculative Ficton, Fantasy, Science Fiction, especially Other Voices)
• Irani, Anosh
• Koncan, Frances
• Leavitt, Sarah (Autobiographical comics; Formal experimentation in comics; Comics pedagogy)
• Lee, Nancy (Fiction; Creative Writing)
• Lyon, Annabel (Novels, stories and news)
• Maillard, Keith (Fiction, poetry)
• Marzano-Lesnevich, Alex (Nonfiction)
• McGowan, Sharon (Planning of film productions from concept to completion)
• Medved, Maureen (Fiction, writing for screen)
• Nicholson, Cecily (Languages and literature; Poetry)
• Ohlin, Alix (Fiction; Screenwriting; Environmental writing)
• Pohl-Weary, Emily (Fiction; Writing for Youth)
• Svendsen, Linda (Fiction, television)
• Taylor, Timothy (fiction and nonfiction)
• Vigna, John (Novels, stories and news; Fiction, Literary Non-Fiction, Creative Writing)

Related Programs

Same specialization.

• Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing (MFA)

Same Academic Unit

• Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing and Theatre (MFA)
• Master of Fine Arts in Film Production and Creative Writing (MFA)

At the UBC Okanagan Campus

• Master of Fine Arts (MFA)

Further Information

Specialization.

Creative Writing combines the best of traditional workshop and leading-edge pedagogy. Literary cross-training offers opportunities in a broad range of genres including fiction, poetry, screenplay, podcasting, video game writing and graphic novel.

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CREATIVE EDUCATION OF CANADA, INC.

Trade agreement helps creative‑play company break into European markets

When Creative Education of Canada first started selling its role‑play products for young children in Europe 13 years ago, they found the region was a good market for high‑quality Canadian goods. But the company also discovered that the 12% duty importers were forced to pay made it hard to compete against inferior products from EU countries where goods could be produced at a much cheaper cost.

The introduction of the Canada–EU Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) in 2017 brought the family business the opportunity it needed to break into the European market.

“Since CETA went through, our exports of ‘Made‑in‑Canada’ goods to Europe have doubled,” says Joyce Keelan, founder and CEO of Creative Education. The company, located in Point Edward, Ontario, outside of Sarnia, designs and manufactures products for children aged 2 to 8 under the award‑winning Great Pretender line, including costumes, accessories, party supplies and imitation jewelry.

Keelan started the business in 1989 after she left her job as a mechanical engineer, facing gender discrimination in the workplace. As the mother of a young daughter, she noticed there were no creative “pretend‑play” costumes and toys available for girls. She started making fabric hand‑puppets, and when other parents started putting in orders for her crafts, Creative Education was born.

The company and its lifestyle brand have grown through the last 30‑plus years, especially internationally, with 25% of sales in Europe, 50% in the United States, 20% in Canada and the rest elsewhere. It has an expanding array of imaginative and interactive products, many of which Keelan still designs. Her children have joined the business and today the company has sales of more than $15  million, with offices in four countries, three global warehouses and some 55 employees worldwide.

Creative Education started more directly distributing its products in Europe six years ago, then set up a subsidiary in the UK and a warehouse in Germany in 2016. Europeans considered its goods “quite pricey, but of course our product was much better…It was still kind of tough to sell it,” Keelan says. “Then CETA came through and all of our costumes could go through with no tariff.”

The agreement “really made our sales in Europe economically viable,” says Keelan. “It really helped put us in a good price bracket.”

Combined with a lower Canadian dollar, “this gives us a real advantage,” says Keelan, noting that the company’s products remain somewhat more expensive than those from offshore suppliers in Asia, “but they’re twice as nice” . Large‑scale demand from Europe particularly comes in the period leading up to the region’s carnival season, which is in the early months of the year, she says, when North American sales tend to decline.

The Canadian Trade Commissioner Service (TCS) has been helpful to the company in Europe, she says, for example when it looked into the prospect of moving its warehouse from Germany to the Netherlands. Keelan says the TCS introduced it to local officials, accountants, lawyers and others who helped with logistical elements in its decision‑making process. It remained in Germany, opening a new warehouse in Hamburg in 2019 and establishing a new EU subsidiary called Great Pretender Europe, another major step in its EU strategy.

The company markets at trade shows, many of which have been cancelled by the COVID‑19 pandemic, although major fairs remain scheduled in the New Year in Paris and Nuremburg, Germany. While sales declined in the early months of the health crisis, Creative Education has done well with a line of face masks that are popular with kids and adults.

“We have large demand in Europe,” says Keelan, noting that mask sales accounted for 80% of revenues at one point. While that is now closer to 30%, “we cannot catch up to orders.”

Canada’s brand is strong throughout the EU, she stresses. “We have customers who come in to see our products from Europe and they say, ‘We only buy made‑in‑Canada goods,’ says Keelan. Europeans are not looking for cheap, they’re looking for value.”

The challenges of selling in this market include Europe’s many languages and cultures, as well as the range of customs and unique demand for products country to country, Keelan says. The company has on‑the‑ground presence there—the daughter whom she first made puppets for is now living in Switzerland, as head of its product development division—and it is hiring a European customer support representative.

Creative Education is also about to launch a store on Amazon Germany, and it intends to next establish one on Amazon France. Future plans to take advantage of CETA include moving further into Eastern Europe, and it also plans to market in Russia.

Keelan’s advice to other companies selling goods and services in Europe is to “not be afraid to reach out and ask for help. The Government of Canada is a great resource; it’s been very good to Creative Education over the years,” she says. “And if you don’t get it right the first time, look around at what everyone else is doing and try again.”

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Creative Education of Canada, Inc., maker of Great PretendersTM, an award-winning leader in children’s costumes, has expanded into the infant toy market. This Fall, we’re introducing The Meiya & Alvin CollectionTM, a first ever-infant toy that combines soft textile and natural rubber to meet the growing consumer market seeking natural and sustainable products to meet the demand of today’s new parents are seeking the best for their children. The Meiya & Alvin Collection was designed to promote infant development while combining natural, sustainable materials and recycled packaging, Having the exclusive rights to distributing the product range, Creative Education plans to distribute Meiya & Alvin through major North American specialty retailers.

Further demonstrating environmental commitment, Meiya the Mouse Soft Rattle Toy is the winner of 2015 Dr. Toy’s Best Children’s Products Awards in Best Green category – an award show developed to help consumers identify and purchase safe, affordable, educationally oriented and stimulating toys.

The Meiya & Alvin Collection will be on display at the ABC Show in Las Vegas, Oct. 18 - 21, 2015 in Booth 5637.

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Creative Education of Canada

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• 135-704 Mara St. , Point Edward , ON , N7V 1X4
• (519) 337-5685
• (519) 337-1542
• http://www.creative-edu.com

Creative Education of Canada, home to the award-winning children's brand Great Pretenders, is a family owned and operated business, established in 1989. Our Made in Canada production facility and Canadian warehouse is located in Point Edward, Ontario. We manufacture children's dress up, jewellery, and accessories as well as distribute the baby lines Meiya and Alvin, Tikiri and Bonikka Dolls. 

Mr. Reid Campbell Vice President

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CANADA CREATIVE

EDUCATION CENTRE

Established in 1991, Canada Creative Education Centre became a hot spot for individuals who desired to take their education to the next level. We have quality teachers who can help ensure your child achieves their academic dream. We also offer help for international students who are new to foreign land and get accustomed to the Canadian culture. We value personal growth and success above all else. We serve students from all ages. And together, we design education systems who work for you. Education is a seedling that needs time to nurture and grow.

We have been recognized as one of the best institutions of education by the Research Department of Concordia University in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Because of our excellent resources, we’ve witnessed first hand students who were nurtured by our teachers and grew up with a high degree of success and recognition. We reside in the heart of downtown Toronto. Surrounded by many outstanding universities such as the University of Toronto, OCAD University, Ryerson University and George Brown College. So why not join today and achieve your academic dream!

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Creative Education of Canada Inc.

We manufacture Great Pretenders! - Award-winning children's dress-up clothes and distribute the Great Pretenders line of children's jewelry, accessories and gift ware. Our latest product is Colour-A-Cape. We can also manufacture apparel or textile-based product at minimum quantities as low as 100 pieces at our plant in Point Edward.

Contact Info

• Phone: 519-337-5685
• Fax: 519-337-1542
• Email: [email protected]
• www.creative-edu.com
• Mailing Address: 704 Mara Street,  Unit: Suite 135,  Point Edward,  ON, 
• Year Established: 1989
• F/T Employees: 325
• Key Contact: Reid Campbell
• Marketing Contact: Patricia Willmot
• Operations Contact: Heather Martin
• HR Contact: Reid Campbell
• Financial Contact: Joyce Keelan
• NAICS Code: 45112 - Hobby, toy and game stores
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• Apparel Manufacturing
• Apparel Manufacturing - Low Minimum Order quantiti
• Private Label Manufacturing
• Textile-based Manufacturing