Target Hardening through Retail Anti-Theft Devices

When your inventory of DVDs on the sales floor comes up short, where do you think they went? Often you come to the conclusion they must have been shoplifted. The same can be said for your CD sales or your games for your console game system, but especially for your razor blades, fragrances and other small, easily concealable high shrink products. That does not have to be the case however. There are numerous retail anti-theft devices that can help ensure that shoplifting is the last shrink category upon which you attribute inventory losses. Let’s take advantage of technology and “target harden” our merchandise through such items as Alpha keepers for one!

Shoplifters are basically lazy and do not want to work too hard to get your merchandise into their hands and out the doors. It then may come back as returned merchandise to you so you can pay for it twice or you may see your merchandise alongside used stereos and knock off purses and watches on Craig’s List or EBay. Shoplifters are also fearful of apprehension and being noticed so noise, lights, and displays they have to “fight” with make them think that there are much softer targets out there they should visit rather than spending the time and risking getting caught in your store – if you are using retail anti-theft devices.

This author is intimately familiar with such devices as they were used in companies I had the pleasure with being associated. It gives a loss prevention manager and thus a retail store manager a great deal of peace-of-mind when he sees his high theft movie DVDs protected with such hardened keepers as the Protect DVD or Protect CD. These products roll bells, lights, and whistles all into retail anti-theft devices that make the shoplifter think that he should just wear a sign saying “please arrest me.” You see, these Alpha keepers are hardened polycarbonate cases with a magnetic lock that are transparent so your product is still plainly visible, including the bar code, to your customer. They have their own built in electronic article surveillance (EAS) tag as well as some other surprises for a would-be thief, including a tamper alarm if the thief tries to open the case without the special magnetic key and a built in alarm that will go off after the item leaves your store with or without an EAS system in place. They also have lights that blink on and off as a visual deterrent but pose no unnecessary delay for your cashier in getting the device off and getting your customer checked-out. They can also still be hung on a hanger without difficulty.

One wishes he had a digital movie camera in hand when the would-be thief, unfamiliar with retail anti-theft devices, tries to open a Protect DVD or Protect CD in the store to get to the merchandise and conceal it and the alarm goes off, forcing him to try to muffle it with his hand or stick it down his pants so it does not make so much noise and draw so much attention – too late. You then need a close-up zoom feature for that look when you tell him that tampering with retail anti-theft devices in your state is a felony and constitutes shoplifting in itself.

Wrapping this up … target hardening will help a retailer sleep better at night, knowing that his high-theft merchandise is where it needs to be: either in the paying customer’s possession or in the store in a Protect DVD or Protect CD waiting for the paying customer. It will also send the aspiring shoplifter down the street to your competitor for fear of you featuring him on America’s Funniest Home Videos!

For more information on Alpha Keepers contact us: 1.770.426.0547.

Promote Safety And Prevent Shoplifting During The Inventory Process

If you haven’t already completed your physical inventory process by now, it’s probably coming up very soon.  You surely know that you have to prepare the store and merchandise for the actual counting event, and prepare your team for the chaos with a solid plan of action.  With all of the additional people in the store and extra workload, it can be a difficult task to prevent shoplifting and workplace accidents at the same time.  In addition to preparing the merchandise and team for the counting and auditing, you should also ensure your team is on the lookout for safety and theft concerns during the entire process. It’s important that you discuss this with your team before the big event, because you are obviously going to be extremely busy that day and you’ll need help identifying and correcting any issues that arise.

It’s a good idea to have all of your normal tasks already taken care of so you don’t have to worry about this during the inventory process.   Make sure all of your merchandise is fully protected with retail anti-theft devices like the Alpha Spider Wrap.  These types of devices not only provide great deterrence, but they also immediately let you know that someone is tampering with the device and trying to steal your merchandise.  This can be an invaluable tool on days when you can’t give your high theft merchandise the full attention usually given by associates in the area, and will go a long way to help prevent shoplifting and alert your team to any attempted thefts as they occur.  You’ll be able to hear the alarm while you are completing other tasks, and respond appropriately.

In addition to ensuring all of your merchandise is protected, you should also be preparing your team for the safety concerns that may arise during the process.  The inventory preparation process can be a daunting task to complete, and even normally safety conscious employees are often rushing to complete tasks in order to comply with a fast approaching deadline.  This is when accidents are most likely to happen.  Working in larger, big box stores, you usually have an outside company come in and perform the actual inventory counting.  Normally this is done by a company that brings in a lot of people into the store at one time and completes the scanning of merchandise within a day or less.  You can imagine that this translates to an environment that is busier than your employees are used to working.

So make sure you take advantage of anything that can make the entire process smoother and limit any distractions, such as retail anti-theft devices that are made to prevent shoplifting, before you start the inventory process. You will have plenty of other things to worry about, and you can be confident that your products are being protected from shoplifters while you are attending to your other tasks.   This way you can focus on getting accurate, and the best possible results from the count. After merchandise is counted, you should be conducting audits on the counts that have been performed by your team, or the third party company to ensure that any mistakes are fixed prior to the final numbers being keyed.  It’s normal to find some mistakes while auditing previous counts, so expect that you will find them.  When auditing, you obviously want to spend some time on high dollar merchandise that can have the most effect on your 

For more information contact us: Prevent Shoplifting or call 1.770.426.0547

How Many Laptops Fit Your Pants? Not Your Problem with Anti-Shoplifting Strategies in Place

Just how many laptops will fit into one’s pants? That is a question that you don’t see on many trivia game shows but it was a question I and my staff became interested in not too many years ago. We were continuously losing laptop computers on our cycle counts for some time and it became clear that they were not just evaporating once we started doing some tape reviews. A man, who was actually pretty good at disguising himself from the camera was getting away with laptops on display, secreting them on his person and getting out the door without activating our anti-shoplifting devices.

He was finally caught when Checkpoint tags were inserted in the battery compartment of every display laptop as well as on the exterior. He was careful to remove the exterior tag of the four laptops he removed next but he didn’t even think about there being an interior tag. He managed to stuff the four laptops down his very baggy cargo pants and head for the exit where he promptly activated the Checkpoint security system and the chase was on! Our security staff chased him for over a block with him trying to hold his pants up as laptops were falling to the ground, finally cornering him with a patrol vehicle and a uniformed security officer. He tried resisting but was quickly talked out of it with the snap of a collapsible baton opening. After he was helped to his feet, handcuffed, and allowed to hold his pants up, he was taken back to the store and the police were called to take him into custody. The four laptops were scuffed up but not damaged but we did not recover the eight others he had stolen on other occasions.

There are many anti-shoplifting strategies that one can use to try to prevent serial shopliftings like these from occurring. The Checkpoint security system utilizing electronic article surveillance (EAS) was our saving grace. Closed-circuit television is instrumental in many a retail theft prevention incident; however, it requires someone to be watching the right thing at the right time; otherwise, the incident can only be investigated after it has already occurred. During busy store times when sales help is busy and security is tied up doing its customer service duties is the perfect time for a would-be shoplifter to do his or her thing. The “laptop bandit” knew that and was careful to avoid detection by cameras as well as disguised himself in case he was seen by the camera on subsequent review. He just couldn’t get by little 2-inch Checkpoint tags stuck in the battery compartment.

Checkpoint systems has many solutions for various merchandise.  As a wise retailer, you want to employ both visible deterrents and invisible anti-shoplifting devices to aid in the apprehension of the shoplifter who tries to defeat your retail theft prevention strategies. Visible deterrents include strong signage and public viewing monitors for your closed-circuit television system as well as visible EAS antennae with responsive staff. Your invisible strategies can include the secreted Checkpoint tags in places shoplifters won’t expect or won’t look. If you put a tag on the outside, they are likely to stop looking after they defeat that one and not bother to look for the one hidden somewhere else in the device. This is that much important with display merchandise that is left out in the open to be handled by your customers. It is too easy for someone to walk off with that display camcorder—or in our case, a laptop. 

Our goal for retailers is to make life difficult for the potential shoplifter. Their job should not be easy which means ours is not either. We have to work at protecting our merchandise; otherwise, you might find yourself trying to count how many laptops really do fit in a pair of cargo pants!

For more information on Checkpoint Systems contact us or call 1.770.426.0547 or www.antishoplifting.net.

The Little Devices That Make All The Difference – Alpha Jewel Lok

When it comes to merchandise protection, bigger isn’t always better.  on’t get me wrong, for larger items, you need to use retail anti-theft devices that will be big enough for the merchandise packaging, but what about the smaller items? If you are a store that sells any kind of jewelry, watches or accessories, then the Alpha Jewel Lok may be just what you have been looking for in a merchandise protection device. It would be unrealistic to use bulky retail anti-theft devices for jewelry or watches, because these are the types of items that your customers want to handle and even try on while they are shopping in your store.

With the Alpha Jewel Lok, that’s exactly what they will be able to do with the merchandise.  This is because the Alpha Jewel Lok is the smallest lightweight EAS based retail anti-theft device available for use today, and it’s a great solution to help you prevent shoplifting. The device itself is very small, and has a little hook on the end of it that locks it closed. I think of it as a miniature padlock with EAS capabilities, so it will set off the EAS towers at the exit if someone tries to leave the store with it attached to an item. The small size of the device makes it a perfect solution for jewelry, because you can attach the device directly to the product. For example, all you would have to do to secure a necklace or bracelet is to open the device, place the hook through one of the links on the necklace, and then close it. The same goes for a watch, you could attach the device to the item by clipping it onto the buckle, a hole in the wrist strap, or really anywhere that the hook will fit on the item.

It can sometimes be a real challenge when looking for ways to prevent shoplifting in your store, so when you find a solution that actually works, you need to take advantage of it. It’s not all about merchandise protection devices though, you also need to make sure that everyone that works for you is on the lookout for possible theft and suspicious activity. Train your team on what to look for, and to always offer assistance to customers that are anywhere in their areas. Not only will this keep your paying customers happy by having someone there to answer their questions, but it will also deter a significant amount of theft in your store. Shoplifters don’t like the extra attention, and will most likely leave the area if an employee is consistently asking customers if they need assistance.

What’s great about the Alpha Jewel Lok is that it can also be used in conjunction with a metal lanyard or cable if needed, which can open up many opportunities to use the devices on other types of merchandise as well. Like most other devices used to protect merchandise, you will need a special S3 key to open and close the device, or everyone would be able to get it open. There’s no need to worry though, because the key is easy to use, and convenient and small enough to carry around with them at all times so your customers won’t have to wait. Every different type of merchandise I’ve used these little devices on have shown as significant difference in the amount of loss that occurred. They are the real deal, and are just as reliable as any of the larger retail anti-theft devices I have ever used to prevent shoplifting.

For more information about Alpha Jewel Lok contact us or call 1.770.426.0547

Knowledge is Power: Pre-Employment Screening Gives You Knowledge

“Oh no!” the screams comes from your sales floor. You rush to see what the matter is and come face-to-face with a very angry looking mother. She immediately informs you that the person you have in customer service dealing with returns is the convicted sex offender who molested her daughter as well as five other little girls in town. She demands to know why you would hire him to work in customer service in a children’s clothing store. “I didn’t know …I didn’t know” is all you can say in your defense.  A little far-fetched you say?  Afraid not. A very similar scenario happened at a company at which I worked. “I didn’t know” just didn’t cut it. You really have an obligation to know or at least to try and find out before hiring someone. Pre-employment screening could have given you that knowledge and at least allowed you to consider the person’s history before putting them in front of your customers.

It is often said that the best predictor of future performance is past behavior. Should that be the case, business owners and management have a need to know what kind of behavior prospective employees have exhibited. In a company I once worked for, a person who was convicted of embezzlement and on federal supervision was hired as a manager for a retail store without the company delving into his background and to everyone’s surprise he committed a large-scale embezzlement scheme involved forged checks. Should the company have completed a pre-employment screening of this individual he may not have been hired, or at least never been placed in a position in which he had control of company funds.

If these situations were not serious enough, in another true situation an assistant store manager was hired after leaving another company in the franchise chain with rave reviews and without disclosing he was actually fired for stealing company funds. Within six months he committed another criminal act but it wasn’t theft. He actually sexually assaulted a customer in the manager’s office during store hours. It was then that it was discovered he had a previous criminal history. That would have been nice information to have from an employee background check prior to hiring him and it would have saved the company a great deal of hand-wringing over the potential litigation and bad public relations.

I could go on and on with stories from various points in my career or from other professionals to whom I have spoken but you get the point. One cannot just bury his or her head in the sand and hope that the person they are hiring to handle their money, deal with their customers, or supervise their young employees is not an embezzler, a burglar, or a sex offender. The employer must make an effort to conduct pre-employment screening using a reputable background check company. A failure to do so could lead your company to facing bad public relations, lawsuits, or even tragedy.

A good background check company can provide you with a peace-of-mind by finding and disclosing those potential time bombs before they end up on your employee roster. They can automate the process so the pre-employment screening becomes a seamless part of your application process. You are then presented the findings and can make a hiring decision based on your own personnel guidelines.

Pre-employment screening needs to become part of your personnel processes if it is not already. You can’t defend against what you don’t know and “I didn’t know” is just not going to cut it when you are facing that customer who was victimized by your new employee. INFORMATION IS POWER! Use it to your advantage and conduct employee background checks. 

For more information on employee background checks contact us or call 1.770.426.0547