If you hadn’t realized it yet, the holiday shopping season is here! It’s been here since the day after Halloween it seems. Retailers of all shapes and sizes seem to be putting their holiday selections out at increasingly earlier times as each new year passes with hopes of attracting more sales for that ever important 4th quarter push. We all know the struggle. This time of year means more toys, gadgets and the new and hottest electronics. It’s also usually the peak time for shoplifting. So when you’re setting out those new electronics displays, or putting that new fixture full of car GPS units out this season, make sure you’re also thinking about the ways you can prevent shoplifting in order to boost your store’s sales.
It was just a few months ago that I received the list of new items my company would be carrying for the holiday season. I was quite impressed with our lineup and the deals we will be offereing our customers. Not long after seeing that list, the product started trickling into the stores little by little. We were getting high end headphones, smart watches, Blue-tooth everything and we were just displaying these with no protective features. I immediately began emailing and calling our buying divisions with concerns about potential shrink. I was stonewalled. No one wanted to hear me out and they were content with the open sell concept. Our stores are already equipped with an Checkpoint Security system, so it would have been no trouble at all to secure some type of protection.
I wasn’t happy at all with this decision. I knew that these items, especially the high end electronics would attract a wide array of shoplifters, especially if word got out that we were the only store in town that didn’t have them locked up. It didn’t take long, either. Stores were reporting 5 and 6 missing a day per store. Thieves were targeting the product faster than the stores could restock the shelves. This would not be good for our 4th quarter. To close the year in the black, we obviously had to sell this product, right? It took about 3 weeks of really hard theft to convince my company’s leadership to invest in a protective tool. For our highest theft electronics, we were able to quickly get Alpha Spider Wraps into our doors.
Of all the retail anti-shoplifting devices out there, the Spider Wrap is probably one of the most effective tools I have ever used. It doesn’t interfere with the display and it does its job at deterring a would-be thief. As soon as we deployed them to our stores, the theft of our electronics pretty much dried up completely. There was no way a thief could get the device off of the product without attracting the attention of the store staff. Even our buyers agreed that the device worked well enough that they would include this in the cost of any future electronic purchases. In the time it took for our company to react to the theft, we had lost thousands of dollars. While a large company can absorb these losses easily, I often think of smaller stores that don’t know that these products exist. If you are a manager of a smaller store, but are plagued with shoplifting, I urge to start being more pro-active in your approach to protecting your biggest financial investment, your inventory.
For more information, contact us: Prevent Shoplifting, or call 1.770.426.0547
