Almax

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Almax
legal form Corporation
Seat Mariano Comense
Number of employees 150
Branch Fashion
Website www.almax-italy.com

Almax is an Italian manufacturer of mannequins and so-called display items. The company employs around 150 people (as of 2012). The company was founded in the 1970s. Artists, specialists and technicians work together to develop the dolls. In the course of the company's history, around 800 original mannequins were invented and planned.

Products

In addition to mannequins, Almax also produces various decorative items: busts of women, men and children, as well as holders for shoes, gloves, watches or sunglasses as well as jewelry accessories and other holders.

Locations

Almax is headquartered in Mariano Comense and has manufacturing facilities in New York City and Shanghai . The company also has branches in Milan , Paris , Stabio , Toronto , Mexico City and São Paulo .

Controversy over EyeSee mannequins

In a series of their dolls, the company installs a video camera in the eye area. The so-called EyeSee mannequin is sold worldwide for around 4,000 euros. Almax installs the Kee Square system , a spin-off from the Technical University of Milan . This is to provide details about the viewer of the dolls. In combination with an evaluation software, the system can make statements about the age, gender and ethnicity of the viewer and register how long people stand in front of the respective figure.

After the media reported worldwide in November 2012 that various fashion chains were using the technology, privacy advocates pointed to problems. However, Almax has no data protection concerns. Peter Schaar , the Federal Commissioner for Data Protection at the time, told the Frankfurter Rundschau in 2012: “I consider the use of such mannequins to be legally more than doubtful. Such monitoring would hardly be justifiable even with a corresponding hint. ”Schaar referred to other electronic systems in the shops: Together with the regular video monitoring, the identification for electronic payment, the shopping behavior known from the customer card and the knowledge gained from radio tags create detailed and personalized customer profiles for the video data.

literature

  • Patricia Mink Rath, Stefani Bay, Penny Gill, Richard Petrizzi: The Why of the Buy: Consumer Behavior and Fashion Marketing. Bloomsbury Publishing, New York 2014, ISBN 978-1-56367-456-3 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ In Some Stores, the Mannequins Are Watching You. In: Businessweek . December 6, 2012.
  2. ↑ Fashion chains spy on customers with mannequins. In: The world . November 22, 2012.
  3. ↑ Markus Morgenroth: They know you! You have you! They control you !: The real power of data collectors . Droemer, 2014, ISBN 978-3-426-27646-4 , o. S. ( digitized from Google Books )
  4. ^ Department Store Mannequins Are Watching You. No, really. In: abc News. November 26, 2012.
  5. ↑ No dummy: This mannequin is spying on you. on: cnet.com , November 21, 2012 (English)
  6. ↑ Why Do Mannequins That Spy On Us Creep Us Out? In: Forbes Magazine . November 28, 2012
  7. ↑ The 'creepy' mannequin that spies on you: Shops use dummies fitted with airport security to profile customers. In: Daily Mail. November 22, 2012.
  8. ^ A mannequin from Italy spies on consumers. In: Kronen Zeitung . November 22, 2012.
  9. ↑ Curiosity grows with the means of its satisfaction. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung . 5th October 2013.
  10. ↑ https://www.berliner-zeitung.de/wirtschaft/ueberendung-durch-schaufensterpuppen-modeketten-spionieren-kunden-aus-3783992