Many school bookstores sell used textbooks. It is an economical option for many students who can’t afford the price of a brand new textbook. It is also a great way to put used textbooks to use. As such, most school bookstores will have a buy back option at the end of a semester or once a year.
For the most part, the used books coming back in during these buy backs are ones that have been legitimately purchased through a students normal course of studies. Once the class has been completed, students can sell the books to make room for new ones, and put the money from the sale towards these new texts.
Unfortunately, any time there is an opportunity for money to be made, there is an opportunity for someone to find ways to work the system. Every year, school campuses report multiple incidents of theft of school textbooks. Some of the theft is students stealing other student’s textbooks in public places like the school library or cafeteria. Other theft is coming directly out of the school bookstores.
Once a student has stolen a text, they can bring it back in to sell as a used book. Unless the school has other security in place to prevent theft, and identify stolen books, some students have reportedly been caught stealing tens of thousands of dollars worth of textbooks through these buy back programs.
Visit the Loss Prevention Store to purchase Bookstore Security and Library Theft Detection System devices and your Electronic Article Surveillance or EAS system from Checkpoint Systems to stop inventory losses.
For more information on Checkpoint Systems and how they can work with your Electronic Article Surveillance or EAS system contact us at Retail theft prevention to stop inventory losses in your College Bookstores, School Bookstores, School Libraries, High School Library, or High School Bookstore call 1.770.426.0547
Many school bookstores sell used textbooks. It is an economical option for many students who can’t afford the price of a brand new textbook. It is also a great way to put used textbooks to use. As such, most school bookstores will have a buy back option at the end of a semester or once a year.
For the most part, the used books coming back in during these buy backs are ones that have been legitimately purchased through a students normal course of studies. Once the class has been completed, students can sell the books to make room for new ones, and put the money from the sale towards these new texts.
Unfortunately, any time there is an opportunity for money to be made, there is an opportunity for someone to find ways to work the system. Every year, school campuses report multiple incidents of theft of school textbooks. Some of the theft is students stealing other student’s textbooks in public places like the school library or cafeteria. Other theft is coming directly out of the school bookstores.
Once a student has stolen a text, they can bring it back in to sell as a used book. Unless the school has other security in place to prevent theft, and identify stolen books, some students have reportedly been caught stealing tens of thousands of dollars worth of textbooks through these buy back programs.
Visit the Loss Prevention Store to purchase Bookstore Security and Library Theft Detection System devices and your Electronic Article Surveillance or EAS system from Checkpoint Systems to stop inventory losses.
For more information on Checkpoint Systems and how they can work with your Electronic Article Surveillance or EAS system contact us at Retail theft prevention to stop inventory losses in your College Bookstores, School Bookstores, School Libraries, High School Library, or High School Bookstore call 1.770.426.0547
Boys will be boys, right? Everyone has heard that expression at least once in their life. Mostly, it’s an excuse for a young man to do something stupid and get away with it. Petty things like break a window, or fight with a brother. Where do you draw the line? Getting into an accident, underage drinking, stealing? If you own a liquor store, or even a store that sells liquor, you may need to consider protecting your inventory with a bottle lock.
A few years back I was reading a new article from my hometown. A couple of teenagers shoplifting from a local grocery store and fled when the owner caught them. They were in such a rush to get away, then ran a red light a few blocks up the road and caused a major accident. Luckily, no one was killed, but the driver of the other vehicle sustained injuries that will have to be dealt with for years, if not the rest of his life. A few weeks later, I read a follow up piece and it centered on the liquor bottle security at this family owned grocery store.
Turns out that the teens were shoplifting alcohol on that day. Not only were they stealing the booze, but drinking it in the store as well. At the time of the crash, the driver was over the legal limit. The driver of the other car was now suing the grocer, claiming he should have done more to prevent kids from stealing and drinking hard liquor. This was amazing to me. The lawsuit, in my opinion, was just as frivolous as the case against McDonald’s hot coffee. How can a business that retails liquor be held liable if someone commits a crime in their store, then hurts someone else as a result of that original crime?
As the weeks went on in my small town, I would see updates from the case and eventually the outcome came about 3 years after the accident. A judge had decided that the grocer was liable, to some degree, for the accident. In his ruling, the judge compared the grocer to a bar serving alcohol to patrons. The court also found that the grocer had experimented with bottle locks in the past, but failed to implement them. The grocer argued that the bottle locks were tested to prevent theft, but he never had much of a theft problem, so he never implemented the security measure.
I found this to be an interesting argument and I wondered if there had been any other cases like this. While most retailers view liquor bottle security as a way to combat shoplifting, I had never thought of how they can be used to protect yourself from other forms of liability. Would this have made a difference in the case? According to the court’s ruling, had there been some form of security preventing easy access to the alcohol, the court may have dismissed the case. While I still don’t think this is a fair ruling, it should serve as a reminder to all retailers how important physical security measure can be.
For more information, contact us: Bottle Locks, or call 1.770.426.0547
Boys will be boys, right? Everyone has heard that expression at least once in their life. Mostly, it’s an excuse for a young man to do something stupid and get away with it. Petty things like break a window, or fight with a brother. Where do you draw the line? Getting into an accident, underage drinking, stealing? If you own a liquor store, or even a store that sells liquor, you may need to consider protecting your inventory with a bottle lock.
A few years back I was reading a news article from my hometown. A couple of teenagers shoplifting from a local grocery store and fled when the owner caught them. They were in such a rush to get away, they ran a red light a few blocks up the road and caused a major accident. Luckily, no one was killed, but the driver of the other vehicle sustained injuries that will have to be dealt with for years, if not the rest of his life. A few weeks later, I read a follow up piece and it centered on the liquor bottle security at this family owned grocery store.
Turns out that the teens were shoplifting alcohol on that day. Not only were they stealing the booze, but drinking it in the store as well. At the time of the crash, the driver was over the legal limit. The driver of the other car was now suing the grocer, claiming he should have done more to prevent kids from stealing and drinking hard liquor. This was amazing to me. The lawsuit, in my opinion, was just as frivolous as the case against McDonald’s hot coffee. How can a business that retails liquor be held liable if someone commits a crime in their store, then hurts someone else as a result of that original crime?
As the weeks went on in my small town, I would see updates from the case and eventually the outcome came about 3 years after the accident. A judge had decided that the grocer was liable, to some degree, for the accident. In his ruling, the judge compared the grocer to a bar serving alcohol to patrons. The court also found that the grocer had experimented with bottle locks in the past, but failed to implement them. The grocer argued that the bottle locks were tested to prevent theft, but he never had much of a theft problem, so he never implemented the security measure.
I found this to be an interesting argument and I wondered if there had been any other cases like this. While most retailers view liquor bottle security as a way to combat shoplifting, I had never thought of how they can be used to protect yourself from other forms of liability. Would this have made a difference in the case? According to the court’s ruling, had there been some form of security preventing easy access to the alcohol, the court may have dismissed the case. While I still don’t think this is a fair ruling, it should serve as a reminder to all retailers how important physical security measures can be.
For more information, contact us: Bottle Locks, or call 1.770.426.0547
How often have you referred to your Loss Prevention department as the “sales prevention department?” Every time I hear a manager, or even an executive say those words, it makes my cringe. To me, it’s the equivalent to nails on a chalkboard. Why do we have that perception? After all, our goal is the same as the store operations group; sell more and loose less. I’ve learned through my career that there is a delicate line one must walk between to be able to stop shoplifting and provide great customer service.
My argument for anti-shoplifting devices were (and still are) this: If we don’t have the item the true customer wants because we were targeted by a thief, we are not providing the level of service our true customer deserves. In order to be a destination of choice, you have got to have the item that your customer wants, in stock, whenever they walk through your front doors. If not, they will go up the road, or down the block to the retailer that is ready and willing to take their money! Your customer also doesn’t want to feel like you think everyone is a thief, either. That’s why we can’t put everything behind a locked counter… There’s a balance and sometimes it’s downright a pain to deal with.
Earlier this year I was part of a team that was trying to address high losses in our pocket knife section. Over the past two years, this area of the store had seen so much loss that the category was not profiting. We were losing more dollars than we were taking in. A team was assembled composing of the buying division, the operations folks and the Loss Prevention department. We needed to address the issue of shrink without hurting the sales. I immediately offered the idea of utilizing something as simple as checkpoint labels, but I was dismissed at first. Imagine that. The buyer wanted to see how using a locking peg would affect sales. Their idea was to remove all anti-shoplifting devices from one test store, and add that same device to every knife at the other. Both test stores were stores with the highest shrink in knives. I couldn’t understand why they wanted to do this. I already knew what was going to happen. In one store, the knives wouldn’t be stolen, but they probably weren’t going to be purchased either. The other store… well, that was equivalent to a knife giveaway.
Thirty days went by and the test results came back. I was right. It was clear by locking the items up, we could prevent theft. It was also clear that our customers did not like the added hassle and avoided buying the product. Locking them up wasn’t a solution. We tried the checkpoint labels for another round of tests, and to my surprise, that really didn’t stop the theft either. The thieves were simply taking the knives out of the package, so the label was pretty in-effective for this application. After some trial and error (and a lot of customer confusion) we found that by using a checkpoint tag, we could secure the knife into the packaging. This greatly deterred a shoplifter since they had to take extra time to defeat the hard tag. While this didn’t stop thieves altogether, it did reduce our losses dramatically. The other great thing about this solution; it was customer friendly. Customers barely noticed the tag and it didn’t prevent them from handling the product prior to purchasing. We had found a winner.
For more information, contact us: Anti-Shoplifting, or call 1.770.426.0547
How often have you referred to your Loss Prevention department as the “sales prevention department?” Every time I hear a manager, or even an executive say those words, it makes my cringe. To me, it’s the equivalent to nails on a chalkboard. Why do we have that perception? After all, our goal is the same as the store operations group; sell more and loose less. I’ve learned through my career that there is a delicate line one must walk between to be able to stop shoplifting and provide great customer service.
My argument for anti-shoplifting devices were (and still are) this: If we don’t have the item the true customer wants because we were targeted by a thief, we are not providing the level of service our true customer deserves. In order to be a destination of choice, you have got to have the item that your customer wants, in stock, whenever they walk through your front doors. If not, they will go up the road, or down the block to the retailer that is ready and willing to take their money! Your customer also doesn’t want to feel like you think everyone is a thief, either. That’s why we can’t put everything behind a locked counter… There’s a balance and sometimes it’s downright a pain to deal with.
Earlier this year I was part of a team that was trying to address high losses in our pocket knife section. Over the past two years, this area of the store had seen so much loss that the category was not profiting. We were losing more dollars than we were taking in. A team was assembled composing of the buying division, the operations folks and the Loss Prevention department. We needed to address the issue of shrink without hurting the sales. I immediately offered the idea of utilizing something as simple as Checkpoint Labels, but I was dismissed at first. Imagine that. The buyer wanted to see how using a locking peg would affect sales. Their idea was to remove all anti-shoplifting devices from one test store, and add that same device to every knife at the other. Both test stores were stores with the highest shrink in knives. I couldn’t understand why they wanted to do this. I already knew what was going to happen. In one store, the knives wouldn’t be stolen, but they probably weren’t going to be purchased either. The other store… well, that was equivalent to a knife giveaway.
Thirty days went by and the test results came back. I was right. It was clear by locking the items up, we could prevent theft. It was also clear that our customers did not like the added hassle and avoided buying the product. Locking them up wasn’t a solution. We tried the Checkpoint Labels for another round of tests, and to my surprise, that really didn’t stop the theft either. The thieves were simply taking the knives out of the package, so the label was pretty in-effective for this application. After some trial and error (and a lot of customer confusion) we found that by using a Checkpoint Tag, we could secure the knife into the packaging. This greatly deterred a shoplifter since they had to take extra time to defeat the hard tag. While this didn’t stop thieves altogether, it did reduce our losses dramatically. The other great thing about this solution; it was customer friendly. Customers barely noticed the tag and it didn’t prevent them from handling the product prior to purchasing. We had found a winner.
For more information, contact us: Anti-Shoplifting, or call 1.770.426.0547
If you’ve been in business long enough, I’m sure you realize that there is a steady stream of people who want to steal from you. It’s like there is this endless line of dishonest people out there. Not a single day goes by that I’m not dealing with a customer trying to rip me off, or closing another employee theft investigation. If you could come up with a way to steal from my company, chances are, I’ve terminated an employee for that very same thing.
Not too long ago I was investigating a shortage of handgun ammunition at one of my store locations. If you hunt, or shoot for recreation, you’re probably well aware that .22 caliber ammunition is hard to find. For whatever reason, there seems to be a higher demand than supply, so it’s like gold. My store would receive anywhere between 50-100 cases a day and would usually sell right through it by noon. I got a call from the store manager that said he was short about two thousand cases, almost a month’s supply. The store recently took an inventory and noticed the shortages for the first time.
Already, I was a month behind. It was anyone’s guess where this ammunition had gone to. The first thing I did was look at the shipping manifests and matched it to the inventory system. Everything was matching up and I was positive the merchandise had made it into the store and behind the ammunition counter. This led me to believe the ammo had been stolen. Since it was not accessible to customers, I was pretty sure I had an employee theft problem. This is where my case dried up.
I spent days reviewing video footage of the warehouse and the sales floor. I couldn’t find a single bit of evidence that proved my internal theft theory. With little to go and no video, I had to put the case on the back burner. I wasn’t ready to close it out, but I had to move on. I did have 25 other stores to support. It’s how it goes sometimes.
A few months went by and I found myself conducting an audit of this store location. As I was walking in their receiving area, I noticed some clay targets (those oranges disks you shoot at for fun), in the garbage can. I found it strange since it seemed to be an entire case and they weren’t broken. Figuring an employee had thrown an entire case out for one, or two broken targets, I went to the cameras in order to correct the mistake with the employee. I was able to see an employee dump the box of targets, but then go off camera view for awhile, before leaving with the box slung over his shoulder.
I looked at sales of clay targets for the day and the only purchase was for that employee. In fact, that employee had purchased a box of clay targets every day he worked for the past 6 weeks. This was strange. I knew he was putting something in the boxes after the targets were emptied, but I had no idea what. I decided to extend my visit and come back the next day. Thieves, I find, are creatures of habit. As he did for the past 6 weeks, this employee purchased a box of clay targets again. As he left the store, I asked him to come to the office with me. To my surprise, when I opened the box… 100 cases of .22 ammunition. I had closed my employee theft investigation.
For more information, contact us: Stop Employee Theft, or call 1.770.426.0547
If you’ve been in business long enough, I’m sure you realize that there is a steady stream of people who want to steal from you. It’s like there is this endless line of dishonest people out there. Not a single day goes by that I’m not dealing with a customer trying to rip me off, or closing another employee theft investigation. If you could come up with a way to steal from my company, chances are, I’ve terminated an employee for that very same thing.
Not too long ago I was investigating a shortage of handgun ammunition at one of my store locations. If you hunt, or shoot for recreation, you’re probably well aware that .22 caliber ammunition is hard to find. For whatever reason, there seems to be a higher demand than supply, so it’s like gold. My store would receive anywhere between 50-100 cases a day and would usually sell right through it by noon. I got a call from the store manager that said he was short about two thousand cases, almost a month’s supply. The store recently took an inventory and noticed the shortages for the first time.
Already, I was a month behind. It was anyone’s guess where this ammunition had gone to. The first thing I did was look at the shipping manifests and matched it to the inventory system. Everything was matching up and I was positive the merchandise had made it into the store and behind the ammunition counter. This led me to believe the ammo had been stolen. Since it was not accessible to customers, I was pretty sure I had an employee theft problem. This is where my case dried up.
I spent days reviewing video footage of the warehouse and the sales floor. I couldn’t find a single bit of evidence that proved my internal theft theory. With little to go and no video, I had to put the case on the back burner. I wasn’t ready to close it out, but I had to move on. I did have 25 other stores to support. It’s how it goes sometimes.
A few months went by and I found myself conducting an audit of this store location. As I was walking in their receiving area, I noticed some clay targets (those oranges disks you shoot at for fun), in the garbage can. I found it strange since it seemed to be an entire case and they weren’t broken. Figuring an employee had thrown an entire case out for one, or two broken targets, I went to the cameras in order to correct the mistake with the employee. I was able to see an employee dump the box of targets, but then go off camera view for awhile, before leaving with the box slung over his shoulder.
I looked at sales of clay targets for the day and the only purchase was for that employee. In fact, that employee had purchased a box of clay targets every day he worked for the past 6 weeks. This was strange. I knew he was putting something in the boxes after the targets were emptied, but I had no idea what. I decided to extend my visit and come back the next day. Thieves, I find, are creatures of habit. As he did for the past 6 weeks, this employee purchased a box of clay targets again. As he left the store, I asked him to come to the office with me. To my surprise, when I opened the box… 100 cases of .22 ammunition. I had closed my employee theft investigation.
For more information, contact us: Stop Employee Theft, or call 1.770.426.0547
Campus libraries, just like retail stores, are not immune to theft. There is a misconception that because the library gives out books and materials for free, there is no need to steal and therefore no inventory losses. Even though the check out materials are free doesn’t mean every library asset is available for checkout. Some reference materials and other equipment are to be kept inside the library, providing a permanent resource for all students. A library theft detection system, like Checkpoint Systems, protects those assets from unauthorized removal.
As student debt continues to rise at astronomical rates, many students are pressured to find alternative forms of income. Stolen goods from unprotected libraries are easily resold to supplement that income. Pieces of equipment such as computers, audio, and video items can be sold through a variety of avenues.
The easiest way is for a student to sell these items to other students. Since it is not uncommon for students to sell books, supplies and other equipment to each other, this is the easiest, and least suspicious way to profit from stolen goods. In fact, many campuses will have boards in local venues, student centers and online promoting the sell and trade of used items.
Any student interested in buying these items would not have any reason to suspect that the items had been stolen. Library theft detection system keeps the assets within the library, instead of in the hands of unsuspecting students.
Visit the Loss Prevention Store to purchase Library Theft Detection System devices and your Electronic Article Surveillance or EAS system from Checkpoint Systems to stop inventory losses.
For more information on a Library Theft Detection System, Library Theft Prevention, or a Checkpoint System and how they can work with your Electronic Article Surveillance or EAS system contact us at Retail theft prevention to stop inventory losses in your library or call 1.770.426.0547
