I started Mannakin from the lounge of our 3 bed terraced council house and it was a tiny idea that I had last July. Having set myself up last year as a retail consultant, I wanted to get more involved in visual merchandising and in particular window displays. Working with my client Honeytrap Lingerie, I bought just one mannequin that went into her shop window as part of a competition. The effect was instant as this eternally young beauty, dressed in gorgeous, sexy lingerie, grabbed the attention of passers by. The postman would give a smile and men and women turned their heads. Great stuff, this is what in your face promotion is all about!

The power of the mannequins had definitely been identified and I then started to collect more and specialise in mannequin hire and repair. The collection grew and grew along with interested clients and by Christmas 2007 there were around 40 in the house.

It was becoming difficult to find space to sit and watch TV, so by the new year I rented a shipping container from the Newark Storage Company. That little move made us as a family quite anxious as we now had an extra bit of expense. Fortunately though enough orders for hire came through, enabling us to cover the cost.

The whole point of working from home was to spend more time with the family and be on call if anyone needed Mum. However, this started becoming more and more frustrating as time went on. Yes, home is a good place to start a venture and I like to think that all the best businesses are started from home, but it soon became apparant that I needed to increase the amount of mannequins that I had due to demand. Not only the number of but the selection of. In March 2008 my quest began for more storage combined with workspace so that I could actually ‘go to work.’ As you can imagine the business really was piling up ontop of us all, including the dog!

However last week it all got a bit too much and so I went out and bought a party sized gazebo for the garden. I then managed to move quite a few out of the house and as you can see, they are still sat there waiting for their warehouse bus to arrive!

This extra work space has now been found. Nearly 2000 sq ft of it and we are evicting all the 120 plus dummies and everything related to Mannakin into the new warehouse. It will be the first time that we can actually have all the mannequins out to look at at once and so we invite you to our launch on 1 July. To get your invite make sure you subscribe to our newsletter via our home page.

I am of course, really excited now about the next stage of growth and look forward to it very much! There is a lot planned, so keep in touch! Roz x