Here is a real life testimonial of one vendor who sold out of ALL his inventory, before the trade-show was over and booked lots of orders for future shipments. This took place at the WonderCon convention in San Francisco in 2011, a huge trade-show for the comic book industry.
This is how the story goes. A month before the trade-show we received an email from a vendor in England requesting to rent mannequins for this exhibit at WonderCon. At the time we were not aware of the WonderCon convention, but we thought it must be a big deal for someone to go through the expense of coming all the way from England to attend. The vendor was from a company called Groovy UK Limited (isn’t that a cool name) and they sell terry cloth robes based on comic book and movie action heroes.
Groovy UK emailed us to rent not one, not two, but FIVE mannequins for displaying their robes. But before they actually arrived at WonderCon they increased their order to include at total of 8 mannequins – 5 male mannequins, 1 female mannequin and 2 kids. Even with us providing them a quantity discount on the rental rate, it was still a nice chunk of change to spend on mannequin rentals. Especially when you consider all the other costs associated with being an exhibitor. We could not wait to deliver the mannequins and meet our contact at Groovy UK- Martin Butler. Here he is:
At first we thought perhaps Martin must be a “mad Englishman” for thinking that all of these mannequins were going to fit within his trade show booth amid the stacks of robes he was selling. But Martin used the vertical space by putting mannequins on top of the tables (wise move because it brought great visibility from far away) and also placed mannequins in front of the booth. There was plenty of room for customers to come inside the booth area and check out the product. The mannequins were like a big billboard that attracted customers to come over.
Three days later when be came back to pick up the mannequins there was not a robe to be found anywhere at the booth. Even the mannequins had been stripped naked to fulfill on the spot sales. Martin was beaming, all the hard work and expense was more than worth it.
When we tell people that mannequins can help them sell more products, they just think we are trying to get them to buy or rent more mannequins from us. Well that is true, we do want more business. But it is a FACT that mannequins sell more products. Well the right mannequin that is, not just any old freestanding dress form will do. Just ask Martin at Groovy UK.
So many vendors make the mistake of not putting enough effort into visual merchandising their tradeshow booth. Simply stacking products and hanging up a sign is not enough to get people to come over unless your are selling a highly coveted product like the Ipad2. Why spend all the time and money to exhibit if you aren’t going to do the extra 20% effort to use props to merchandise your booth which help you sell more products?
If you need to rent or buy a mannequin to sell more products at your next trade-show, visit www.MannequinMadness.com or call us at 866-444-1752. We have associates all over the USA and Toronto who can assist you with your mannequin rental needs.
