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 free deals or offer sprits of cologne.

Their only job is to stand silently in the middle of a store,

adorned in the retailer's finest threads.

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

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 looked so good. I ended up spending like way too much money on four different outfits.

Stacey Bourne is the vice president of sales, marketing, and creative at Fusion Specialties, the largest manufacturer of mannequins in the

world. 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% 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. 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.

If you're looking at what retailers are putting on mannequins, you can see anywhere from a 10 to 40%

up sale on that particular item that they're selling.

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