Mannequin Madness

Henderson-Townsend’s company rents and sells mannequin body parts.

When she first started, Henderson-Townsend mostly kept her company a secret. “I didn’t tell my parents at first because I knew they wouldn’t get it,” she says. She even named her business Mannequin Madness because she knew she was “either mad for doing this–or I’d found a really crazy niche in a unique market.” Now that she’s been in business awhile, she says, “People look at you differently. Before, it was ‘What are you doing?’ Now they look at you like, ‘Wow, why didn’t I think of that?’ ”

Henderson-Townsend’s clients run the gamut, from lawyers who buy mannequins from her so they can demonstrate to juries how a victim was shot or stabbed to movie companies and museums that need them for display purposes. One customer won an Elton John jacket at an auction and wanted the upper torso of a mannequin so he could display the jacket in his dining room. She’s also sold them to clothing entrepreneurs who sell their products on eBay and want to display the clothes for photographs.

entrepreneur.com