Retail Painted Metal Frame Child Mannequin (Manikin)

Why use Retail Mannequins?

Use exhibition stands to display your retail items. Improve your sales through visual merchandising: Use in boutiques, salons, toy shops, clothes shops and other retail shops to enhance the value of your products and improve sales. See below for more information.

Boot Kidz Mannequins

The Boot Kidz are a collection of mannequins designed by Karen Henry. Each Boot Kid has cement Wellington boots, a base, and a metal-bar frame. They are for sale in a variety of bright funky colours. There are three characters Joe, Chloe, and Lucy.

Ebay Mannequins (Live)

eBay has many second hand and brand new mannequins for retail shop window displays and for visual merchandisers to buy online. With shops constantly refreshing their window displays, high street retailers often dump their retail mannequins at rock bottom prices. The yellow panels below take a few seconds to load - try the links below if nothing interesting shows up.

Male Mannequins	Female Mannequins	Child Mannequins
Choose section to refresh mannequins

Definition: Mannequin (alternately, manikin, mannikin, manakin, dummy, lay figure, or form). The word comes from the Dutch word manneken, literally meaning 'little man'. Mannequin is the French form.

Why should I use child mannequins in my shop?

mannequin in shop window with clothes cartoon style

Visual Merchandising

Use mannequins as models in shop windows and retail stores for visual merchandising. Merchandising is a marketing practice in which the brand or image from one product or service is used to sell another.

Visual merchandising is the management of stock in specialist sales outlets in order to ensure the display of the fastest selling items.

Placing items that sell easily next to more expensive items has been shown to increase the sales of the less expensive items. Scrambling your merchandise also works. This occurs when a retailer adds goods and services that are unrelated to each other and to the firm's original business.

Placing mannequins in video stores, salons, boutiques, and toy shops is an effective way to attract customers and increase sales. Imagine placing a large statue in the middle of your store. This is sure to attract attention to that area. A mannequin effectively serves the same purpose as an expensive piece of art does in attracting peoples attention.

Increase average cost

one reason not to use mannequins is they increase the average cost per item of stock sold, however the benefits as listed below outweigh the cost

Agents for sale

mannequins are an agent for items they sell - increasing asset turnover and long-term consumer attitudes to your shop as a brand - much like hiring an additional member of floor staff without the need for training (this is one of the biggest cost benefits for business justification) and automatically segmenting your customer base by attracting "people-minded people" (people interested in looking at other people)

Customer acquisition

they function at the beginning of the customer acquisition and sales process - in that they attract attention (make the customer aware of the product) allowing for further action. The next steps required by the shopkeeper must be to foster interest, stimulate desire, and finally encourage action.

Aspirational

mannequins are formless human shapes (non-recognisable zero-celebrity attractiveness), this increases aspirational feelings within consumers, in other words not having any recognisable celebrity status means attaining desired appearance is easier using mannequins than with say fashion models wearing clothes

Vehicle for communication

they provide an additional vehicle for communication between you and the customer. Mannequins have a their own unique "body language", which conveys information to the potential buyer, for example an outstretched arm or positioning of the head and eyes at a target product, or a elegant posture all convey subtle and powerful subliminal messages to the customer

Region 2 DVD
Amusing tale of a young artist who creates mannequins for a living and ends up falling in love with one of his creations not realising that the mannequin's body has been taken over by a beautiful woman who has travelled in time from ancient Egypt.
Starring: Andrew McCarthy, Kim Cattrall, Estelle Getty, G.W. Bailey, James Spader, Meshach Taylor, Carole Davis
Director: Michael Gottlieb
View

Visual Merchandising

sell easy-to-sell (less expensive) clothing through visual merchandising by placing the mannequin in close proximity to the stock

Brand Extension

can be used in brand extension campaigns where a well-known brand is used to introduce a new brand

Product Differentiation

allow for product differentiation by placing expensive items on the mannequin

Psychology

it is a well known psychological phenomenon that the human eye is highly sensitive to the human form - so placing a mannequin on the far side of a store has the benefit of attracting peoples attention to that area (NOTE: you may need to put the mannequin on a plinth or table for people to see it better), for example putting a mannequin in the front window of the shop attracts people to the window, however putting a mannequin against the far back-wall of the shop has the benefit of luring people into your shop

Professional

generally mannequins give the store a more professional appearance - buyers know intuitively that shops with lots of mannequins are good shops - shops with high turnover can afford mannequins - by this logic these shops are more professional and consumer orientated

Push Brands

mannequins increase brand awareness by "pushing brands" - this is done in a number of ways - one obvious way is through increasing the bargaining power of the store - the store can increase its prices negating the cost of the mannequin - quite simply presenting items in a better way, in other words the overall perceived value of the items on sale increases - making the customer more likely to spend more. The customer has a certain target price they will pay for an item. There is an upper and lower limit on this - mannequins increase the upper limit on this price

Jewelery and Accessories

putting jewelery (careful of theft) on the mannequin or clothing accessories (such as scarves and hats) makes the mannequins look elegant and stylish - this has the benefits of not only helping you sell those and other accessories, but also provide aspirational imagery (the animal instinct and need for the customer to better themselves and their family)

Signs

if you want to put a sign up in your store and you want shoppers to read it the best spot for the sign is at the base of a mannequin or as a sign above or on the mannequin itself - such as "Discount of 10% on all mens trousers effective today ONLY". A large proportion of people will unwillingly read this message - mainly because of its elevated status - next to the mannequin
mannequins have high audience attention probability (the degree to which a target consumer is likely to pay attention to an advertisement)

Other tips:

Read a book on Feng Shui - the Chinese art of positioning objects in buildings and other places based on the belief in positive and negative effects of the patterns of yin and yang and the flow of chi, the vital force or energy inherent in all things.