Mannequins

Stroll through any mall or shopping center in America and you’ll find yourself surrounded by an army of plastic salespeople. Unlike their human counterparts, they don’t peddle buy-one-get-one-free deals, or offer spritzes of cologne. Their only job is to stand silently in the middle of a store, adorned in a retailer’s finest threads.

And, as it turns out, that’s a pretty effective sales strategy.

BORNN: I know I’ve done my job well if people say to me, “I was in that store and I didn’t notice the mannequins. But you know what? Their clothes look so good, I ended up spending, like, way too much money on four different outfits.”

Stacie Bornn is the Vice President of Sales, Marketing and Creative at Fusion Specialties, the largest manufacturer of mannequins in the world.

BORNN: If you can think of some of the top athletic brands, the top big box brands, in an average American mall, we’ve probably done 80 percent of those stores at one time or another. We’re not selling them mannequins; we’re selling them a vehicle on which to display their product.

The reality of retail is this: lots of consumers shop directly off the mannequins in the display windows.

BORNN: And the reasons for that make sense, right? If it’s styled well, then people just go, “Ooh, I want to look like that — I’m just going to look for everything that’s on that mannequin.”

While commerce is increasingly shifting online, the majority of fashion sales still happen at physical stores. And for retailers, mannequins are a central — but often overlooked — part of the bottom line.

BORNN: If you’re looking at what retailers are putting on mannequins, you can see anywhere from a 10- to 40 percent upsell on that particular item that they’re selling.

For the Freakonomics Radio Network, this is The Economics of Everyday Things. I’m Zachary Crockett. Today: mannequins.

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Modern mannequins trace their roots to dress forms used by tailors. Clothiers in 19th century Paris and London pinned garments on molded torsos made of wood, papier-mâché or even wax — human shapes without arms, legs, or heads. These were mounted on posts and eventually displayed in the first shop windows. When the mass production of clothing began in the early 20th century, mannequins evolved. Soon the figures not only had heads and limbs but glass eyes and even wigs. In the 1960s, they acquired nipples. Top mannequin designer Adel Rootstein developed mannequins modeled on famous women, including the model Twiggy and the actress Joan Collins. Mannequins were carefully dressed and arranged by professionals.

BORNN: When you look back into the age of department stores, before the big mall chain retailer, they hired stylists and visual merchandisers who would go in and dress mannequins, style wigs, and style makeup, to be on trend and to match outfits. 

In the following decades, the rise of malls and big-box retail chains caused a spike in demand for mannequins. Stores went from buying 3 or 4 of them to ordering them by the truckload. With the increase in volume, mannequins became more generic — less like life-size dolls and more like the anonymous stand-ins we see today. And the way that stores handled their mannequins changed too.

BORNN: When you look at the U.S. marketplace and the malls of the ‘80s and ‘90s, that’s when the visual merchandising employee kind of started to fall away. Really, the people working in most retail mall stores were teenagers or part time employees who didn’t have a lot of time because they were there to set the floor, to stock the floor, and to sell through as well. They also had to dress the mannequins. And visual merchandising wasn’t their expertise. 

Fusion Specialities came along in the midst of these trends. The company was founded in the mid-80s by two entrepreneurs who recognized that the product was ripe for innovation.

BORNN: They said, “How can we make this product so easy to use that isn’t going to cause a lot of breakage, isn’t going to cause a lot of poorly set up mannequins?”

Traditional mannequins had a lot of problems, starting with arms. They had to be attached using keyhole fittings — you put the little post that’s on one piece into the hole on the other and then slide it to a locked position.

BORNN: Very easy to do when the mannequin is naked, but when the mannequin is dressed, under layers of clothing, and you’re doing it blind? I mean, it’s really difficult to do.

Fusion’s mannequins were easier to use. They featured magnetic arms that snapped into place, and a single-piece construction rather than one that was split at the waist. With these developments, even an untrained 17-year-old with a part-time summer job could assemble an attractive display.

BORNN: They’re really easy to dress, or flip over, do what you have to do. 

Today, mannequins are a $5 billion dollar global industry. Whether you’re talking about a full body, head-to-toe, or just a lone hand in the window of a jewelry shop, mannequins are everywhere — from discount clothing stores to the private showrooms of design houses. At the highest end of the market, you have companies like Bonaveri, who make mannequins for luxury brands like Burberry or Louis Vuitton. They’re crafted in Italy using materials like leather and wood, and cost a few thousand dollars each. Then, there are firms like Fusion Specialties that work in much higher volumes — with mainstream brands like The Gap, Nike, Abercrombie & Fitch, Victoria’s Secret, and Target.

BORNN: I would say on an annual basis, we probably make somewhere around 25,000 FFEs, which is what we call a “full form equivalent,” a full mannequin.

CROCKETT: It’s a whole army. 

BORNN: Yes, it’s a lot of bodies. 

Fusion Specialties’ mannequins cost anywhere from $450 to $1,300 a piece.  That range reflects the difficulty of manufacturing, and the level of customization.

BORNN: The whole point of a custom mannequin is that you put your clothing on and it fits. What are the ideal body types, what is the — you know, there’s inspirational and aspirational, and where within that realm do you want to fall, right? A tall, lean mannequin is pretty close to what you’ll always see in a high fashion brand. Someone like, you know, a Gap or a Abercrombie, maybe you have less tall and lean, and more relatable to the American consumer. And then, of course, in athletic, you start looking about what’s inspirational on an athletic body. Sometimes we bring models in, whether that’s in groups or individually. 

CROCKETT: So, some of these mannequins you see at a major retail store could be a real person somewhere out in the world?

BORNN: Absolutely. 

This design and sculpting process takes place at Fusion’s creative studios, just outside of Denver.

BORNN: Most sculptors came to us with a fine arts background. You’d see armatures and clay, and cast heads and hands and feet. The nice thing about a clay sculpt is you can dress it. So we might choose to go down the clay path. And then as technology has changed, so has our process to also include digital sculpting — so we have 3D printers in-house. And whether it’s a clay sculpt or a 3D print, it then goes back to our workshop. They are taking these sculpts and creating master prototypes from them. 

CROCKETT: And outside of these custom orders, is there a standard mannequin that people can just order? 

BORNN: Absolutely. There’s a lot of brands out there who don’t have the budget or the quantities, so we do have a large amount of offerings in our catalog. 

Across the market, more than half of mannequins sold today are still made of fiberglass, which can be delicate and labor-intensive to make. Fusion Specialties’ founders, though, pioneered the use of plastics early on.

BORNN: They worked with chemical companies around the globe and found they could do rotational molding at room temperature. So it didn’t require a lot of heating and cooling, and big ovenry, and that sort of thing. 

It also enabled a more advanced level of sculpting.

BORNN: How much realism of that body do you want to show? One of the things our material has allowed us to do is create these very dynamic mannequins that show a lot of movement. If you are an action sports brand, is there a specific sport that you’re trying to emulate? The authenticity of that pose is incredibly important. If you were to put a golf mannequin in a golf pro shop, every single golfer who walks into that golf shop is going to have an opinion about if that is a good swing or not. 

Once the team has finalized the prototype, it’s shipped to the company’s manufacturing facility in Juarez, Mexico, where it’s tooled for mass production.

BORNN: We can create a mannequin approximately every 18 minutes from that mold.   It then goes to a polishing finishing line, so seam lines are sanded off, the form is painted, and then it’s packaged and shipped out the door. 

There are all kinds of mannequins out there that anyone can buy. At the online retailer mannequinmall.com, you can find categories like: Realistic; Abstract & Egghead; Flexible; Athletic; Sexy; African-American; Child & Baby; something called “Invisible Ghost”; and lots more.

BORNN: One of the trends that we see a lot is headed mannequins versus headless mannequins — because so much of what retailers sell is the additional merchandise, the hats, the sunglasses. Almost everything that we do now has a head, most of which are eggheads — so, faceless, just round heads. So many stores are really speaking to such a diverse customer base now. We are starting to see more a resurgence of skin tones entering the market again. Gender neutral mannequins are a huge topic of discussion. 

Brands can aim for a wider customer base by being visually vague, or they can target a specific demographic by creating certain features, colors or shapes for their mannequins. They can also expand their market with new sizing. In 2019, Nike caused a   stir by introducing its own plus-sized mannequins in its London flagship store. This came 2 years after the company released its first collection of plus-sized apparel.

BORNN: That is certainly a large part of our focus right now: inclusive sizing — not only for women, but also for men.

And sometimes a trend is not about size as much as shape.

BORNN: I mean, I can’t tell you how many times we worked for brands that asked for JLo butt as that was becoming popular.

The nature of shifting tastes and emerging market segments means that mannequin preferences are always changing. So, where’s an older mannequin to go? That’s coming up.

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At a typical retail chain, a new fleet of mannequins might last three to five years before they’re replaced. Sometimes, they get worn down by kids who use them as punching bags. Other times, a company might just want to do a redesign and shake up its displays. A few decades ago, an entrepreneur named Judi Henderson wondered what happened to all of these mannequins — and she didn’t like what she found out.

HENDERSON: The department stores would just routinely throw away their mannequins if they closed or remodeled.   So I convinced retail stores to, just say, “Hey, why don’t you let me have your mannequins for free?”

Henderson discovered that retailers were happy to pass off their inventory, because it saved them thousands of dollars in disposal fees. So, she set out to collect as many of them as she could.

HENDERSON: Sears was getting rid of mannequins out of all of their stores. And my ex and I rented a cargo van and went to every Sears store within a 50-mile radius and just collected mannequins. Ralph Lauren was the next biggest one. Then Macy’s, Nordstrom. We developed a network with other used mannequin vendors across the country. We created a relationship so that, say, The Gap was remodeling mannequins out of all their stores, they only had to call me and I would arrange the pickup at all their different locations, because I had someone in each major region.

CROCKETT: If you had to throw out just a totally wild guess, how many mannequins would you say have passed through your hands over the last 25 years?

HENDERSON: Oh, my god. Millions. Millions.

Today, Henderson runs a company called Mannequin Madness. She’s in the business of recycling and repurposing old mannequins. And at her warehouse in Oakland, California, she’s got rows and rows and rows of them.

HENDERSON: There’s just body parts all over the place. You may see, you know, something upside down, something sideways, things stacked on top of each other. I don’t want to say it’s like a morgue, but some people kind of liken it to that. To me, it’s just just “day in the life,” you know. They’re like giant Barbie dolls to me.

Henderson offers these mannequins for a fraction of what they would cost new.

HENDERSON: Most of our used full-size mannequins are like in the hundred dollar range and under. I can have something from as cheap as 20 bucks. And then I’ve got some, it’s got all the bells and whistles, that might be somewhere in the neighborhood of $200.

Her customers are all over the map.

HENDERSON: The bulk of our business is the small to midsize retailer. But we also have museums. Then we have fashion designers and we have fashion schools. Photographers. We have people who are doing trade shows. Of course, all the people who are selling on Etsy and Poshmark and eBay.

She’s also found a market with hobbyists.

HENDERSON: It’s amazing the fascination that we have with the human body and what people will do in a creative way for either functional purposes, like a table or something artistic, like making a dressform Christmas Tree. Leg forms, which are just from the waist down for displaying pants — a lot of people like to make planters out of those. They’ll cut out the top and they’ll put either fake or real plants coming out of them.

For Henderson’s retailer clients, there’s also an environmental incentive.

HENDERSON: The average mannequin weighs about 25 pounds. They’re made out of materials that take like thousands of years before it’ll biodegrade. Think about it. Fiberglass just doesn’t really biodegrade. It’s the same material that you would make with a surfboard. They just don’t break down.

Mannequin manufacturers are aware of the ecological footprint of their industry. Some firms have developed mannequins from materials that are biodegradable, or that can be industrially recycled. And Fusion Specialties refers its clients to a variety of programs that can assist with disposal.

BORNN: We call it end of life.

Again, that’s Stacie Bornn.

BORNN: Depending on the material that you have, you can potentially recycle it. If it’s a thermoplastic, you can send it back to be chopped or reground, and put back into the mannequin stream, or just the general plastics stream. There’s a lot of mannequin materials that don’t fall under any kind of recycling program so we send it to a program that literally takes these mannequins and incinerates them and creates energy for the power grid from them. 

They also work with used mannequin brokers like Judi Henderson.

BORNN: We work really well together because sometimes there’s just some needs that we can’t meet. Whether it’s timing or, you know, old product that maybe we don’t have anymore, so we send people to Judi, and then she sends people to us sometimes.

HENDERSON: After 20 years, I still get excited if I get called to go into a store and find their mannequins in a basement. Some people like saving the whales. I love saving the mannequins.

For a mannequin, this retirement marks the end of a largely thankless career. It spends years on the front lines of retail, selling shirts, pants, and jackets — often without much credit. In the trade, it’s sometimes said that a good mannequin should almost be invisible. But for the people who play a hand in manufacturing, selling, and upcycling them, they’re always center stage.

BORNN: I’m out there all the time, you know, to the shock and horror of my children — sometimes if something’s staged wrong or an arm isn’t fitting in, I just go over and fix the mannequins myself. Once you’ve been in this business, you can’t walk into a store without noticing the mannequins. 

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For The Economics of Everyday Things, I’m Zachary Crockett. This episode was produced by me and Sarah Lilley, and mixed by Jeremy Johnston. We had help from Daniel Moritz-Rabson. And thanks to listener Melisa Wilson, who suggested this topic. If you have a suggestion for an episode, feel free to email us at everydaythings@freakonomics.com. Our inbox is always open. All right, until next week.

CROCKETT: What’s, like, the weirdest request you’ve ever gotten? 

BORNN: You don’t want to hear it. 

CROCKETT: All right. I think I know where you’re going with this. 

BORNN: Yep. When you say “mannequins,” people get some wild ideas sometimes.