Ryan Mitton wants to put a smile on your face.

Faces are his business – the faces of his customers, his customers’ customers, and those of the friendliest mannequins he’s ever seen.

Mitton, who owns BigSmile Mannequins, knows that when a shopper is happy and amused by something on display in a store, he or she is more likely to make a purchase.

He knows because it happened to him – the first time he walked into a shopping mall overseas and saw an array of unusual, delightful, amusing mannequins on display draped with clothing, jewelry and accessories.

The mannequins were also putting sales staff in a good mood.

Ryan Mitton of BigSmile Mannequins, left, and Eddy Patterson of Echo House Clothing join in the fun.

“I spent about four hours in that mall and came home with bags and bags of clothing – all bought from stores that were displaying those mannequins,” Mitton says.

After he boarded a flight for home, it wasn’t his new clothes that held him up at Canada Customs – it was the mannequin he had purchased from the manufacturer with an eye to launching the line in other parts of the world.

“I can’t blame them,” he says of Customs officers, with a smile not unlike those found on his bright-wigged products.

“Who knows how many times people have tried to smuggle something into the country concealed in a mannequin?”

That was last August. And now the 26-year-old former geologist has launched BigSmile Mannequins, which holds the North American distribution rights to this unique line of mannequins that are rapidly becoming a memorable form of retail entertainment for shoppers.

They can be seen at such stores as Echo House Clothing in Calgary, where owner Eddy Patterson fell for the mannequins at first sight. So did Kamal Houssian at Nevada Bob’s in Lethbridge and Shaff Devji at Method Clothing on Whyte Avenue in Edmonton.

Mitton makes a deliberate point of dropping these and other names while talking about his company because he constantly credits other with his success.

At the outset, Mitton called John Forzani, founder and head of the national sporting goods chain, brashly but politely asking the fellow Calgarian if he’d impart 15 minutes of free advice about starting a business.

Forzani met with Mitton for more than 45 minutes.

“He basically gave me a tutorial in business while I took notes,” Mitton recalls.

After bringing in a shipment, Mitton – armed with Forzani’s tips – took the mannequins to a trade show in Edmonton, then loaned them to merchants occupying booths all over the hall’s floor space. The exhibitors were gleeful at the reaction from patrons, and helped to sell the mannequins as much as their own clothing.

It was smiles all round.

In fact, virtually everyone in retail or wholesale ventures that he approaches agrees to assist him in some way.

An Edmonton academic used pictures of his mannequins in a lecture in the United States, and suddenly Mitton was getting orders from the States and the Island of Aruba in the Caribbean. Strangers have spread the word as far as Australia, another destination now on BigSmile’s shipping labels.

But isn’t the world of commerce supposed to be cutthroat?

“I have never once experienced that,” Mitton says over coffee at a local Starbuck’s, where he worked as a server until jumping full-time into his own business.

“It’s been the opposite. Everyone wants to help.”

Marketing experts like to dismiss as a “myth” the notion that products can sell themselves, but BigSmile’s mannequins surely come close. Just click on the Web site (www.bigsmile.ca) and try to resist those expressive pink faces adorned with a variety of comical wigs.

Once merchants investigate further, they typically break into another smile for reasons of cost. BigSmile’s mannequins are comparable to or even lower in price than the traditional product, ranging from only $220 to $875.

Mitton likes to point out that the displayed mannequins work 24 hours a day, seven days a week for a retailer.

The future is looking as bright as a mannequin’s smile for Mitton’s company. In a short time, it has imported and sold hundreds of the figures, which come in dozens of ever-increasing styles and expressions, and 14 hair colours. Every order from the manufacturer has so far been about double the previous order.

Besides having the North American rights, BigSmile is licensed exclusively for the United Kingdom, Australia and Ireland, with other jurisdictions pending.

These are exciting times for Ryan Mitton and his company. After emphasizing once more that many people helped him get his start, he relishes the thought of someday doing the same for others.

“One of my long-term goals,” he says, “is to have the time, experience and success to offer this same mentorship.”

He can be reached by e-mailing rmitton@bigsmile.ca or by phoning 403.875.0717 in Calgary. The fax is 403.508.1708.