Don’t Irritate Customers With Poor Merchandise Protection – Use Sensormatic Safers Part 1



Sensormatic Safers – 4                                                                                        WC Blog 737
Retail Anti-Theft Devices – 3

Don’t Irritate Customers With Poor Merchandise Protection – Use Sensormatic Safers Part 1

     Of the top ways retailers can avoid irritating me, many of them can be avoided simply by using Sensormatic Safers. Oh, there are a lot of things that get on my nerves but here are some of the biggies. I will expound on what merchants can do to improve these areas in a minute.
• Recently I have had a dickens of a time finding a particular store brand of Dramamine for my wife. Every one of this company’s locations around my area has had empty shelves. That’s either a LOT of people with motion sickness, a poor job of getting back in stock or a theft issue.
• Stores with 20+ checklanes and only 6 open along with self-checkout stands and lines are queued up extending 5 or more customers deep.
• Stores that carry multiple brands of a specific item such as a flash drive or ink jet printer cartridge and choose to protect one brand but not the other against theft, what are they thinking?
• Dump bins of DVD’s that I believe are 4 feet deep as I nearly fall in trying like an idiot to find “a really good” movie…in a DUMP bin of DVD’s!
• Waiting to find an associate to unlock a locking peghook so I can purchase an Xbox game card that has NO value until it is rung up at the cash register.
Each of these things irks me and I find it is a good time to bring it up because they have all happened to me recently. What frustrates me as a former Loss Prevention Manager is that the use of retail anti-theft devices could prevent several of these irritants.

     When it comes to merchandise accessibility putting products on a locking peghook is no different than using a locking showcase. If something is expensive enough to warrant the use of a locking peghook there is a better solution for your store. Sensormatic Safers provide the same level of protection (I would argue better and I will expand on that later) and they improve service for customers AND store personnel. As a Loss Prevention Manager I had the experience of using different retail anti-theft devices and one of those was the locking peghook. It was a good idea at the time. Shoplifters were able to just remove an item from a peg, take it somewhere in the store and hide it. Professional shoplifters in Organized Retail Crime (ORC) groups would sweep a peghook clean of ALL the items on it. Think about losing a peghook filled with $10 packs of lithium batteries…that can add up to a LOT of money. Locking peghooks allowed us to restrict access to the goods because they required an employee with a detachment key to open the hook and ring the purchase at the register. The problem is this is exactly what you do with a locking display case. Customers are forced to wait for an available associate who may be busy helping someone else and eventually that customer leaves. That is a huge blow to sales and it is also a good way to lose customers won’t return to your store. 

     Loss Prevention Systems, Inc. (LPSI) is a company that was built with the objective of helping retail owners stop theft and also improve sales. Bill Bregar, who founded LPSI was in the Retail Loss Prevention field for years as a National Director of Loss Prevention for several large retailers. He keeps abreast of the best retail anti-theft devices on the market and recommends them to his clients to help them get the best protection and improve upon the service offered by the store. Both are used to foster reduced shortage and increased sales. One of the products recently added to the list of recommendations are Sensormatic Safers. These devices have electronic article surveillance (EAS) technology embedded in them so that stores equipped with Sensormatic towers at their doors will activate alarms if a Safer protected item is carried too close to the towers. Don’t worry of you don’t have a Sensormatic security system, LPSI can help you with that too. If you are fretting over the cost of a system don’t, visit their website and checkout the ROI Calculator. It is an amazing tool that is free to use and will show you how affordable a system is.

     In Part 2, I will discuss more about the advantages of Sensormatic Safers versus trying to use alternative protections like showcases and locking peghooks. Suffice it to say if I am frustrated waiting for service for a locked up item there are more me’s out there and they may have shorter fuses than I do. Do yourself a favor, read Part 2 of this series and see how a Safer can boost sales and reduce theft.
Get more information on Sensormatic Safers, contact us or call 1.770.426.0547 today.

     
     

Of the top ways retailers can avoid irritating me, many of them can be avoided simply by using Sensormatic Safers. Oh, there are a lot of things that get on my nerves but here are some of the biggies. I will expound on what merchants can do to improve these areas in a minute.

• Recently I have had a dickens of a time finding a particular store brand of Dramamine for my wife. Every one of this company’s locations around my area has had empty shelves. That’s either a LOT of people with motion sickness, a poor job of getting back in stock or a theft issue.

• Stores with 20+ checklanes and only 6 open along with self-checkout stands and lines are queued up extending 5 or more customers deep.

• Stores that carry multiple brands of a specific item such as a flash drive or ink jet printer cartridge and choose to protect one brand but not the other against theft, what are they thinking?

• Dump bins of DVD’s that I believe are 4 feet deep as I nearly fall in trying like an idiot to find “a really good” movie…in a DUMP bin of DVD’s!

• Waiting to find an associate to unlock a locking peghook so I can purchase an Xbox game card that has NO value until it is rung up at the cash register.

Each of these things irks me and I find it is a good time to bring it up because they have all happened to me recently. What frustrates me as a former Loss Prevention Manager is that the use of retail anti-theft devices could prevent several of these irritants.
     

When it comes to merchandise accessibility putting products on a locking peghook is no different than using a locking showcase. If something is expensive enough to warrant the use of a locking peghook there is a better solution for your store. Sensormatic Safers provide the same level of protection (I would argue better and I will expand on that later) and they improve service for customers AND store personnel. As a Loss Prevention Manager I had the experience of using different retail anti-theft devices and one of those was the locking peghook. It was a good idea at the time. Shoplifters were able to just remove an item from a peg, take it somewhere in the store and hide it. Professional shoplifters in Organized Retail Crime (ORC) groups would sweep a peghook clean of ALL the items on it. Think about losing a peghook filled with $10 packs of lithium batteries…that can add up to a LOT of money. Locking peghooks allowed us to restrict access to the goods because they required an employee with a detachment key to open the hook and ring the purchase at the register. The problem is this is exactly what you do with a locking display case. Customers are forced to wait for an available associate who may be busy helping someone else and eventually that customer leaves. That is a huge blow to sales and it is also a good way to lose customers who won’t return to your store. 
     

Loss Prevention Systems, Inc. (LPSI) is a company that was built with the objective of helping retail owners stop theft and also improve sales. Bill Bregar, who founded LPSI was in the Retail Loss Prevention field for years as a National Director of Loss Prevention for several large retailers. He keeps abreast of the best retail anti-theft devices on the market and recommends them to his clients to help them get the best protection and improve upon the service offered by the store. Both are used to foster reduced shortage and increased sales. One of the products recently added to the list of recommendations are Sensormatic Safers. These devices have electronic article surveillance (EAS) technology embedded in them so that stores equipped with Sensormatic towers at their doors will activate alarms if a Safer protected item is carried too close to the towers. Don’t worry of you don’t have a Sensormatic security system, LPSI can help you with that too. If you are fretting over the cost of a system don’t, visit their website and checkout the ROI Calculator. It is an amazing tool that is free to use and will show you how affordable a system is.
     

In Part 2, I will discuss more about the advantages of Sensormatic Safers versus trying to use alternative protections like showcases and locking peghooks. Suffice it to say if I am frustrated waiting for service for a locked up item there are more me’s out there and they may have shorter fuses than I do. Do yourself a favor, read Part 2 of this series and see how a Safer can boost sales and reduce theft.

 

Get more information on Sensormatic Safers, contact us or call 1.770.426.0547 today.