2026 Plans and Changes
It’s February! We've been very busy over the past month planning various changes and goals for the year whilst accounting for the challenges we expect to face, so we thought it'd be best to write up a blog post that outlines and explains everything clearly.
DAME makeup and changing capacities
So, let’s first start with a bit of background. DAME is formed of and run by 3 people, Emily, Charlotte and Lillian. Emily is responsible for the initial designs of our masks and various planned mask features, plus she also works on sanding and painting our masks. Charlotte works on various engineering challenges, as well as doing the hair and eyes on our masks and processing skinsuit orders. Lillian works on a lot of digital design work in the background, pulling together the work Emily and Charlotte do into a final design.
Whilst this is how we ideally like to split up work between the three of us, we can each cover other tasks within our mask-making studio where needed: Both Emily and Lillian can do the eyes and hair on masks if needed, Charlotte can do any 2D design work as needed to a final quality, all of us manage communications with customers and posts on social media, and Lilian has managed skinsuit quality checks and shipping in the past. Our largest issue is the sanding and paint, which up until recently, only Emily could do.
To solve this problem, we reached out to, and have since been working with, Porkcube to have them as a backup. They worked with Emily on masks at Charming Kitsune in the past, so they're already well equipped to support Emily during breaks or busy periods. Porkcube managed to pick up our method of doing the makeup fairly quickly and for the past year has been working on the occasional mask for us, to the same high standard of quality.
However, Emily is pregnant and due to start maternity leave in a month's time, so will now not be able to work on masks for a while as the dust created by sanding and painting raises safety concerns for a newborn baby. Instead, the plan is for her to move onto digital work that can be done whenever and wherever is convenient, without needing to deal with hazardous materials.
We've got Porkcube up to speed and ready, however they also have their own work ongoing and might want to have a break as well, so towards the end of last year, we began working with Alpeia Crafting & Design to get them involved as another backup.
Currently, Alpeia has begun work on orders and has finished doing the sanding and painting on their first mask, followed by some in-person training for the makeup. We are working to try and get them set up as quickly as possible to help us with our upcoming deadlines, and as far as we can tell things are going well. So, even with Emily going on maternity leave, we should be able to keep up things running smoothly with the help of both Porkcube and Alpeia.
Mask Production Times have Increased by 2 Weeks
With all of these changes, we will now need to send every mask order to someone else to be sanded and painted, whereas before it was only occasionally required. Due to this, we have decided to increase the production time estimates of all of our masks, both to ensure that we are working under less pressure and to set realistic expectations for our customers.
As of February 2nd 2026, these are the new production time estimates:
| Product | Old Production Time | New Production Time |
|---|---|---|
| Mask | 8-14 weeks | 10-16 weeks |
| Shell | 6-12 weeks | 8-14 weeks |
| Wig | 6-12 weeks | 8-14 weeks |
| Backplate | 4-8 weeks | 6-10 weeks |
Mask Prices are Increasing by £15
This change has resulted in a lot more internal shipping for normal mask orders, which in turn has increased the cost of producing a mask, so we are raising the cost of masks to accommodate this. However, we've reviewed the way we manage internal shipping and implemented an improved system in order to minimise the cost increase as much as we can.
We have also had to take a look at our pay rates, especially as we are sending more work outside of DAME for a little while, as the UK National Minimum Wage will be increasing in April. This has prompted us to make the appropriate adjustments needed to our pay rates in order to ensure that we can continue to earn enough through DAME to support both the ongoing business and ourselves.
Where possible, we have absorbed the impact of this, but this is unfortunately not feasible on masks because we have already fine tuned the production process to be as cost effective as possible.
These two factors have resulted in a £15 GBP increase to the total costs of our masks, which we plan to implement on 30th March 2026. We are satisfied that this increase is reasonable, especially when compared to the rising costs of general living expenses, but we thought it was best to give everyone as much warning as possible so that anyone saving up for a mask can account for the price increase.
We've also taken the chance to rebalance the shipping on separate shells and wigs whilst ensuring that it is still the same cost to buy a full mask as it is to buy it in parts. The prices of all options available on our masks are remaining the same.
The new component prices:
| Product | Old Price (GBP) | New Price (GBP) |
|---|---|---|
| Mask (Ami/Anna) | £590 | £605 |
| Mask (Alice) | £660 | £675 |
| Shell (Ami/Anna) | £335 | £325 |
| Shell (Alice) | £375 | £365 |
| Wig (Ami/Anna/Alice) | £210 | £235 |
| Eyes | £30 | £30 |
| Padding Set | £15 | £15 |
| Backplate (Ami/Anna/Alice) | £65 | £65 |
New Mask Features
With Emily being able to focus more on digital work for a good portion of this year, we saw this as a great opportunity to focus on improving the eye region of our masks. This is something we've wanted to do since we launched our Gen 3 masks, as it is a large reason why Gen 3 even came to be in the first place, but we have struggled to find the time due to the complexity and time-consuming nature of the work.
In short, our goal is to decouple the eye shapes from the mask style, much like we did with the different styles of elf ears we offer. As it stands, we believe the majority of our customers likely choose what mask style they want based on the shape of the eyes, so this change will remove that restriction and allow for even greater customisation of our masks.
This will mean a lot of work split between Emily and Lillian, as they will need to take each of the eye shapes, scale and align them to each of the shells they are not built into, then update the eyelashes, irises and eyebrows as needed. We do not know if we will get every possible combination to work as planned, but we will try our hardest to do so and only plan to release them if we are happy with the final product.
Additionally, we plan to remake our iris designs as vector images where possible, which will allow us to take full advantage of the high quality printers that we invested in a few years ago. This will also make it easier for us to look at adjusting each iris design that we have to work in every eye shape, further expanding the options people can choose from.
We also want to add some new eyelashes, the plan is to try and create a design that we can add to every eye shape, with the same key features but a different underlying shape to match that eye. Ideally this means, for example, two masks made from the same source material can share a resemblance despite using different eye shapes, or two shells can be used to create different expressions for the same character!
Finally, we're planning to expand the choices for the eyebrows beyond just colours. We want to add new shapes, as well as the option for custom eyebrows. These will be added to the mask pages.
Speaking of which, with all of these changes, all of our 3 current mask styles will eventually offer the same options as each other, so it would make sense to try and merge them all into a single product page, making it much easier to customise a mask using any of our available styles. However, with everything we have planned, this will involve making a lot of changes to our website to accommodate the necessary options needed for the new page to function correctly. This will take a lot of work by Charlotte, so we can’t make any commitment to a timeline for these changes yet.
Mask Accessories
Once work on the eye shapes has been done, we're hoping to start working on some new mask accessories. We have plans for animal ears, horns and ponytails.
Our Gen 3 masks were designed with accessories in mind, with a total of 15 different bolt locations that they can be attached to with the same type of bolt used to attach our wigplates. This means every Gen 3 mask made should already be compatible with accessories that we add at a later date.
Our goal for each of these is to include a lot of different options and styles, but our current plan for this year is to get the base versions of them finished first. If things all go to plan, we're looking to launch them once Emily returns from maternity leave, however we will have to see how long development actually takes and if some of these new accessories get pushed into next year instead.
Once the base options are finished, then we can take customer feedback and work on adding more choices depending on demand. We have lots of plans in mind, but as a team of three it will take time to make sure a high standard of quality is maintained going forward.
Other Changes
In addition to the updates to the Gen 3 masks, we have a few other changes to cover.
MWF Rush Orders
We have recently had MWF reach out to us to suggest that we start offering rush orders. This is something that we have looked into in the past on our own, but at the time we decided not to make this option available as we were wary of overloading MWF.
Now with MWF contacting us about it, we are comfortable offering it to our customers, though there is a limit: A maximum of 10 rush orders can be placed in a single month. This limit will have to be manually reset on the product page, so it might take a few days for us to update the page each month.
Based on MWF’s estimates and the data we have from recent orders, we are expecting it to save nearly 100 days on the average length of an order if a customer picks this option, meaning an MWF rush order is now the quickest way to buy a suit through DAME. Though, please keep in mind that it is more expensive to get an order rushed, so we recommend only using this option where you know that a regular order will not arrive in time.
Breast Forms
As we are writing this blog post, there is only one size of breast forms in stock between our two suppliers, that plus an extra set that we already have stored means there is a grand total of two different sizes available to our customers. We originally sold these without holding stock as it allowed us to offer breast forms to customers quickly without needing to worry about the cost of storage, but consequently have always been stuck needing to update our website to reflect what our suppliers may have in stock and finding new suppliers as needed.
Throughout our time doing this, we have learnt that there is no real difference between a lot of the breast form brands aside from the box they come in, so now we feel that it's time to invest in a better system for selling them.
Our plan is to sell “Breast Forms”, not “Breast Forms from IVITA, Forever Young, etc.”, where we will ensure that you get breast forms that are the correct size, shape and colour, from whichever supplier is appropriate at the time. To help prevent some of the supply issues we have faced in the past, we are also planning on ordering some breast forms to keep in stock ourselves, so we will not be solely reliant on buying them on-demand.
In addition to this, we also want to sell different types of breast forms. The plan is for them to all be the same sizes and shape, and hopefully colour, but for the differences between them to be more meaningful for kigs.
The main variants we will offer are Normal breast forms, that will be silicone with nipples (what we currently sell), and Family-Friendly breast forms that will be silicone without any nipples. Alpeia is also currently working on making Travel Friendly breast forms shaped out of foam with a fabric cover, similar to the fabric-covered hip pads that they make, meaning they would be much lighter than silicon breast forms and even possible to vacuum-pack. Each set of breast forms will come in a box with velcro you can attach if needed, the same as our current breast forms.
More Photoshoots
We hope to continue doing photoshoots to help show off some of these new features that we have been working on. Currently we are producing a mask that should demonstrate the semi-open mouths and alternative elf ear sizes by creating a cute but vicious little vampire.
Conclusion
So as you can probably tell, lots of new things are being worked on whilst Emily is going on maternity leave, but we should now be in a position to cover her workload in the meantime so as to not slow down regular orders, plus we're going to use the time to try and push a lot of ideas ahead.
We do anticipate some side effects, but that is why we are increasing the mask production times and trying our best to take into account the increased internal shipping. For the things we don't have control over, such as minimum wage rising, we have done our best to minimise the impact on customers.
We have a lot of goals we are hoping to achieve by the end of this year, but our first focus is on the eye area of our shells to bring all 3 mask styles in line with each other. We also have big plans to change how we do breast forms, though we will continue to ensure we don’t neglect other areas of the business whilst implementing these changes.
Posts like this are always a risk, revealing a lot of our goals like this is bad if we don’t meet them - and even if we do, they might not always live up to people’s expectations, but with tons of changes coming throughout the year we wanted to start with a positive outlook and hope that everyone understands if things don’t quite to go plan.
All in all, as you can likely tell, we have high ambitions for this year, especially if you include some other things that we are keeping a secret for now!