YZ sales were built on four things: the humour and functionality of their design, the novelty and attractiveness of the recently developed brightly coloured penolic resins, the perfect craftsmanship of their  construction and the exotic quality of the materials used. YZ was a quality brand - and it showed.

As regards novel and exotic materials, HH had the edge over most, if not all, of its competitors – those materials were already being used, by its talented and experienced craftsmen, in walking stick and umbrella stick production.

As The Fancy Goods Trader put it, writing in November, 1927 about the YZ brand:
“Messrs. Howell & Co. are especially equipped for the efficient and economical production of these lines by reason of their long experience in connection with the making of wood articles. Their main business is the manufacture of walking sticks, umbrella sticks and handles. etc.—a business in which they have taken a leading part for years. The house was established as far back as 1832, and through all this period it has maintained an enviable reputation for the high quality of its output. The same care and skill that have served to build up this reputation are now also employed in the manufacture of all the ranges of novelties.”

The company had been using phenolic resin for umbrella and walking stick handles for many years and its craftsmen were, by 1924, skilled in working with that material. The image above shows the phenolic resin handle of a Henry Howell walking stick, dated March 22nd, 1913.

The image above shows a walking stick blank cut from a board of Cyprus ebony, which is then used to produce the finished walking stick. No matter how cleverly those shapes are cut, there will always be a lot of waste wood left which had to be disposed of. Bernard Howell realised that, rather than going to waste, that wood could be used to produce a revenue-earning line of quality novelty products.

Bernard was a talented, and published, cartoonist, many of his cartoons containing depictions of birds, and it was he who was later to produce the YZ design drawings. Depictions of some of his YZ designs can be found here.
Bernard Howell Cartoon Doodles Calendar Pages

It is probably no coincidence that the first YZ product produced (April 8, 1924) was the Pelican car mascot and the second (March 27, 1925) the Pelican match holder and (a little later) the Pelican ashtray. They can be easily and quickly cut from a piece of board, using a simple template and the tools used to produce the walking stick blanks. The pieces were finished in the same way as the walking sticks.

HH already had the factory, the wood, the phenolic resin, the tools, and the craftsmen skilled in their use. Add a couple of eyes and the YZ Pelicans could be churned out quickly at relatively low cost. But not for a low price – in 1928 the Pelican match holder and striker, holding 18 matches, cost 14/6 (roughly equivalent to 73p). And buyers still had to buy the matches. In 1928 a box of 50 matches, complete with its own striker, cost 1½d (one and a half old pence - roughly equivalent to ¾p). The rich bought YZ Pelicans and boxes of matches, the poor bought boxes of matches - at that time a labourer could expect to earn, on average, between 14/- and 26/- per week (70p - £1.30p).

After the initial 1924 car mascot, the company concentrated on smoking-related items. On March 27th, 1925 designs were registered for the Pelican match holder (and it seems reasonable to assume that that design registration also covered the Pelican ashtray), Grampus and Chirpy. These models were presumably produced in readiness for the launch of YZ in Dunhill’s shops.