Mannequins Step In for Human Billboards, but Some Are Losing Their Heads
Mannequins waving signs sometimes lose their heads to vandals, too; ‘tatted up’
LOS ANGELES—The sign waver beckoning passersby to a smoke shop here was a dream employee. The 6-foot-2-inch blonde helped boost business without ever taking a break or a paycheck—until she lost her arm.
The employee was a robot, or, more precisely, a mannequin with a motor on its midsection that rotated a sign. Businesses are deploying such contraptions to lure customers to carwashes, pizza parlors and pawnshops, part of the march of machines replacing human workers.
This step of the march is proving complicated, however.
“Too many people would graffiti it. The chick looked like she was tatted up from head to toe,” said Jeff Davtian, a 25-year-old employee of A2Z Smoke Shop in Los Angeles’s Koreatown. “They would undress her, they would jack her wig…One day I came out and she’s missing an arm. That’s when I said, ‘alright, I’m done with this.’ ”
Others across Los Angeles can relate.
Joe Renderos, head of legal-services firm Triumph Group, emerged from his office one day in October to find his mannequin missing a head. “I had to call the guy who sold me the doll and he brought me another head,” he said.
Su Servicios, a nearby tax firm, had two robots stolen, a year apart. “It’s probably kids—always during Easter break,” said manager Joseph Hernandez.
Now he pays a man $600 a week to do the job. “No one’s going to steal him, but he does cost more,” he said.
Rapid Insurance bought a robot in August because a human sign waver wasn’t bringing in much business. They dolled up the mannequin, named it Salma and locked it to a pay phone out front.
“They ripped off her eyelashes; they took her earrings; we had a lady trying to steal her shoes,” agent Jasmin Hurtado said. “And those were expensive shoes.” On a recent weekday, Salma was barefoot, a binder clip holding back her hair.
Despite the problems, curvy sign-waving robots are hot sellers. Velocity Signs LLC in Sacramento, Calif., has sold more than 1,100 oscillating signs—though many use cardboard cutouts of people instead of mannequins, said founder Scott Adams. He says sales exceeded $1 million the year after entrepreneur Mark Cuban bought a 10% stake for $75,000 on the television show “Shark Tank” in April 2014.
Mr. Adams says he invented the devices in 2007 after seeing a sign waver laboring in intense heat. He obtained a patent last year and has since sent letters demanding several competitors halt sales.
As with many hot technologies, though, the origins are in dispute. At least two others have applied for patents for similar devices. In one, the inventor said he made the machine because “waving a sign in all kinds of weather for minimum wage…should be phased out for humane reasons.”
Another entrant, David Fines, owner of SignWavingRobot.com, says he invented the devices after he mistook a human sign waver for a mannequin because the man didn’t move for several minutes. “Right then it hit me,” Mr. Fines said. “I realized I just needed to move the sign.”
Mr. Fines, a 49-year-old serial entrepreneur with a reddish beard, says he has sold thousands of the devices for $200 to $1,500.
“I’m the master of this business,” he said, “the king daddy.” Mr. Fines received a cease-and-desist letter from Mr. Adams, but said he has no plans to comply.
When Mr. Fines met a reporter at a strip-mall doughnut shop, he was finishing what he said was a sales call. “One blonde and one brunette. Take one and one, it’s better,” he said into the phone, before jotting down credit-card information.
His phone rang 16 times during a 45-minute talk. “This is all money. Ka-Ching. Ka-Ching,” he said after one missed call. He later showed a reporter a screen on his phone that suggested his sales exceeded $70,000 over the first 28 days of October.
Sign wavers, or human billboards, have been around since the 19th century. An 1843 book about London describes a surge in “peripatetic placards” on the city’s streets, carried on long poles or worn over shoulders. Charles Dickens “likened this phenomenon to a sandwich—a piece of human flesh between two slices of pasteboard,” according to the book.
In the U.S., businesses pay humans to wave signs partly to skirt rules on where they can post advertisements. When local governments have tried to ban sign wavers, users have argued that the policies infringe free speech.
In St. Johns County, Fla., south of Jacksonville, Jeff “the Sign Guy” Cappelletti and two friends last year protested a 1999 law banning sign waving—by waving signs dressed as a chicken and Gumby. Mr. Cappelletti said local officials recently began enforcing the ban, which “blatantly violates the First Amendment.” County officials say they prohibit sign wavers because they distract drivers.
Now some local officials are cracking down on motorized mannequins. In Boise, Idaho, 208 Title Loans recently pulled inside two mannequins—nicknamed Delilah and Darla—after local officials threatened fines.
“I went to fill out a permit but you can’t fill out the dimensions for a mannequin, so they said it’s not considered a sign,” said 208 owner Lindsay Campbell.
Boise zoning administrator Scott Spjute said humans may wave signs, but not machines. “We’re only prohibiting the non-human-held signs,” he said.
Some in the human-billboard industry aren’t concerned by their new robotic rivals. “No one ever stole one of my sign spinners, and I don’t have to plug them in,” said Dennis Keizer, owner of Best Direction LLC in Seal Beach, Calif. “I’m not going to lose my business to a bunch of mannequins.”
Source:WSJ
[author] [author_image timthumb=’on’]http://sandropiancone.com/images/SAN_D2-1.jpg[/author_image] [author_info]Sandro Piancone[/author_info] [/author]
