I don't see how this got by the Grist editors -- this is a puff piece on marketing.  It's kind of interesting, but it doesn't have anything to do with sustainability.  thousands of Japanese tourists pour into Potter's adopted county of Cumbria each year..... uh, airline flights?  global warming?  
annual retail sales now valued at around $500 million More consumer crap?  Sustainable?

Beatrix Potter was an interesting figure, maybe an early environmentalist.  Sad to see her works incorporated into the vast consumerist machine, with apparently no thought at all paid to the contradictions.

Right, Bart, I had the same reaction.  I thought the point of sustainabiiity involved learning how to buy less and less -- not to facilitate a custom of "gift-giving."