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Mannequin Madness began in 2001 when Judi was looking for a mannequin for an art project. She encountered a small company in San Francisco that rented mannequins, but was on the verge of closing its doors. Judi decided to buy the company’s 50 mannequins and start her own mannequin business as a hobby. She put up a Web site and after her dot com job vanished, she devoted all her energy into what became Mannequin Madness.

Now Mannequin Madness maintains solid growth by handling mannequin liquidations for Sears, Ralph Lauren, St Johns, Bloomingdales and Nordstroms. These mannequins are then sold or rented to a wide variety of customers in the U.S. and Canada. Last year the company went national, handling mannequin liquidations for Niketown and Kohl’s. Clients of Mannequin Madness include artists, event planners, trade-show vendors, production companies, museums and even lawyers who need a mannequin for a courtroom demonstration. Judi hopes to grow her business by becoming the largest national mannequin liquidator and opening other offices in strategic locations.

All day long Judi deals with dummies. They never listen to a word she says. But Judi's strategic vision for taking her small California business into the future resulted in Intel Corporation awarding her $100,000 for the smartest plan for using technology to create a profitable and thriving small business. Her vision of integrating her front and back office processes, automating inventory management, while cutting operational costs would set the stage for a significant business expansion.

Her company’s name: Mannequin Madness, Judith Henderson-Townsend is the CEO.
Her goal: Become the first national liquidator of mannequins.

Judi calls herself a mannequin liquidator and recycler. She buys used, perhaps slightly forlorn mannequins - a dinged ear or chipped knuckles - that would otherwise be destined for anonymous burial in a landfill. The company usually pays nothing for the mannequins, helps the environment by reducing landfill waste the mannequins would usually cause, and ends up making a profit in the end. Mannequin Madness maintains solid growth by handling mannequin liquidations for Sears, Ralph Lauren, St Johns, Bloomingdales, Nordstrom, Niketown and Kohl’s.

Mannequin Madness sells or rents mannequins online to museums, stores, or schools in the U.S. and Canada for a fraction of what they’d cost new. “Not all mannequins are created equal,” Judi explains. “There are Hyundai mannequins, and there are Rolls Royce mannequins.” A top-of the line dummy that might have cost $1,100 and been graced with finery at a department store like Saks Fifth Avenue can be yours, unclothed, for perhaps one-fifth of that.

Judi is a self-proclaimed “accidental entrepreneur”, yet now she has a national business and recently was selected to take part in the White House Project, a leadership training program sponsored by Oprah Winfrey. Watch featured videos by following the links below:

• CNN Small Business
• Your Green Life
• Daryn Kagan Business

Mannequin Madness is striving to become the largest mannequin liquidator in the country. However, the company faces significant obstacles. While mannequin inventory is usually free, the inventory is limited to mannequin liquidation by large retail stores. In addition, storage for mannequins can be expensive along with the transportation costs associated with liquidating mannequins.

The greatest challenge has been inventory. "We don't have the luxury of ordering product when we need it," Judi says. "We have to take it when it becomes available." Because the company typically must buy inventory quickly and en masse, it is often drowning in mannequins, which are large and hard to store. More than that, though, because it has inventory (~2-3K mannequins) all over the country, selling thru multiple sales channels (WebStore, eBay, Retail at the warehouses), with varying levels of quality, condition and value, it simply gets hard to keep track of things.

In an attempt to wrap her arms around her inventory problems, Judi went in search of a software solution. What she found, however, was discouraging. Companies had designed inventory management systems robust enough for her needs, but they were intended for large companies. Systems geared for small businesses, meanwhile, proved weak and inflexible. "We have big business needs, but we have a small business budget," she says.

She uses RFID tags to speed and simplify inventory tracking. The embedded chip technology, based on radio frequency, holds more descriptive data and lets them scan inventory on high shelves in the warehouse from a distance. Integrating this serialized inventory into inventory systems also proved to be a stumbling block for most solutions.

CRM Automation, Order management, Fulfillment and Accounting Integration to QuickBooks are some of the other business processes that needed to be addressed to streamline operations.

Edition, Modules, Users & Roles

• Edition: Enterprise Edition
• Modules: WebStore, eBay, POS, CRM, Accounting, Order Management
• Users: Owner, Accountant, Retail Associate, Fulfillment

Migration of Existing Solutions

• Remote Integration of existing osCommerce WebStore
• Subsequent migration to Agiliron WebStore
• Import of inventory information from RFID data
• QuickBooks

Challenges Addressed & Results

• All Sales Channels Integrated
  • WebStore, eBay, Retail POS
  • Auto-inventory management and synchronization across all channels
  • Centralized Order Management across all channels
  • Centralized Order Fulfillment for all channels
• Serialized Inventory across multiple stock locations
  • RFID data import integration
  • Real-time access to stock data as well as attributes such as shape and condition
• Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
  • Single customer database of customers from all channels
  • Filters for email marketing

Impact on Business

• Single Integrated Solution for managing all the Sales, Back-office and Front-office functions.
• Significant cost savings in time and personnel for managing operations
• Total visibility into business from anywhere

Adoption & Deployment Timelines

• Having been an early adopter since April 2008, the modules have been adopted and integrated into business process as they became available.

When I won a $100,000 technology grant from Intel Corporation in a business competition in January 2006, I was able to evaluate various enterprise management solutions (that supported RFID and integrated inventory, CRM, accounting and fulfillment activities) that were on the market without regard to their cost. For once I could seek a solution based on my business needs, instead of a solution based on what I could afford.

What I learned from that experience is that the most expensive solution is not always the best solution. After installing a system that cost $30,000, I soon realized that it was not as easily customizable as the sales rep had lead me to believe. It was cumbersome to use which made it difficult for my non-technical staff members to implement.

Fortunately, I learned about a new product on the market - Agiliron. I was able to participate in their beta test program and I quickly become an early adopter of this product. The fact that it is a Web-based system gives me the flexibility to access important data that I need from anywhere and it is all contained in one integrated application. In the past, I had my accounting information in one application, my orders fulfillment information in another application and detailed inventory information in yet another application. Instead of independent silos, I now have information that is seamlessly integrated into one solution. Since it is delivered as a service, I don't have to have staff to support it and no backups or upgrades to worry about. We can now spend less time collecting data or generating reports and more time analyzing them.

Agiliron has made my company more productive, saved time and allows me to offer the features of a robust integrated system at a fraction of cost of similar solutions.

- Judith Henderson-Townsend, CEO, Mannequin Madness