Smart mannequins to entice buyers into stores

NEW DELHI, INDIA: Yes, now the mannequins staring from the showroom, want to tell you something. They all look identical like the bodies with featureless faces - spooky in a dark museum at night. But these can beckon you from outside the store, sending messages to your cellphones and beaming pictures of their outfits onto them. Smart mannequins are one of the latest efforts by the struggling retail industry to lure customers away from the internet and back into brick-and-mortar stores.

“We decided we had to work out a way to bring the good old-fashioned mannequin into the 21st century,” said Jonathan Berlin, the managing director of Universal Display, the company that is selling mannequins with electronic implants.

About a year ago, along with his partner Adrian Coe, he had an idea to outfit their product with electronic beacons, small transmitters that can communicate with the cellphone.

Berlin and Coe created a separate company, Iconeme, just for the beacons, which interact with users through the company's app.

Shoppers can see what a store's mannequins are wearing, who designed the clothes and how much they cost. One can even buy items from the store if they are able to make a decision through the app.

To some, it might seem as if Iconeme were designed to take all the fun out of shopping. But Berlin argues that many people want to save time, love using their smartphones and could sometimes use a little extra help picking up an outfit. “Some people don't have the confidence to put an outfit together,” he said. “I think a lot of people need inspiration.”

Iconeme is not the only business trying to use technology to help people shop in stores. A company called MyBestFit created kiosks that quickly scan people's bodies, analyze a database of clothes and suggest.

The small cylindrical beacon is hidden in the waist and the mannequins can send a signal to people within a 100-foot range of the store, trying to entice them in with lucrative deals.