Every store I visit, or manager I speak to always wants to know what they can do to prevent shoplifting. I will always be the first person to say that there is not one single method, or tool you can implement that will stop your losses. You have to take a multi-layered approached to combat shoplifting. I thought I would do something a little different and make a three part series on, what I believe are the most fundamental pillars to battle shoplifters.
Unless you’re a major, multi-billion dollar a year corporation, chances are you don’t have a loss prevention team in your store. It’s more than likely up to you, and your store employees, to prevent losses from shoplifters. Most store managers want to simply deter a theft than having to go through the process of contacting the police and having someone arrested. It’s just as simple to scoot the shoplifter out the door and recover your merchandise. At the end of the day, you keep the money in your store, and that’s what our ultimate goal is anyway.
Your store employees are one of the bigger investments you make as an employer. Why not use those employees to prevent shoplifting. Think of this… You can only be in one place at one time. Your employees are always around different areas of the store at all times. So how do you get your hourly staff excited about stopping theft? It’s not an easy question to answer. One of the first things you need to shore up is the level of customer service your customers are receiving. When a shopper walks into a department, are they greeted and offered assistance, or are they ignored as your employee trudges away at a task? I can tell you from years of experience that a shoplifter does not want to be noticed. They want to come into your store with their head down and not bring attention to themselves. If they know employees are aware of their presence, and will be monitoring them in case they need assistance, they will be less likely to steal from you.
There’s two sides to this equation as well. As retailers, our main focus is to drive sales. If your employee is engaging your customer, think of the potential add on sales that can be made. So not only is your employee doing their part to prevent shoplifting, they are boosting your bottom line. The best part of this… you don’t have to spend a single penny. This is one of the simplest ways to get your team motivated to prevent theft all while driving sales and helping your store meet sales expectations. If your store is known for great service, your customers will tell their friends. I’ve had long term customers tell me that they drive an extra 25 minutes to come to my store because they appreciate the level of service they receive.
Customer service is the most important of the three pillars of reducing losses from shoplifters. It’s a simple method for you to immediately implement and you will see a return on this investment on the very same day. Don’t let shoplifters take advantage of your store; provide them with exceptional service and you will be sure to see your losses decrease all while your sales go up!
For more information, contact us: Prevent Shoplifting, or call 1.770.426.0547
Every store I visit, or manager I speak to always wants to know what they can do to prevent shoplifting. I will always be the first person to say that there is not one single method, or tool you can implement that will stop your losses. You have to take a multi-layered approached to combat shoplifting. I thought I would do something a little different and make a three part series on, what I believe are the most fundamental pillars to battle shoplifters.
Unless you’re a major, multi-billion dollar a year corporation, chances are you don’t have a loss prevention team in your store. It’s more than likely up to you, and your store employees, to prevent losses from shoplifters. Most store managers want to simply deter a theft than having to go through the process of contacting the police and having someone arrested. It’s just as simple to scoot the shoplifter out the door and recover your merchandise. At the end of the day, you keep the money in your store, and that’s what our ultimate goal is anyway.
Your store employees are one of the bigger investments you make as an employer. Why not use those employees to prevent shoplifting. Think of this… You can only be in one place at one time. Your employees are always around different areas of the store at all times. So how do you get your hourly staff excited about stopping theft? It’s not an easy question to answer. One of the first things you need to shore up is the level of customer service your customers are receiving. When a shopper walks into a department, are they greeted and offered assistance, or are they ignored as your employee trudges away at a task? I can tell you from years of experience that a shoplifter does not want to be noticed. They want to come into your store with their head down and not bring attention to themselves. If they know employees are aware of their presence, and will be monitoring them in case they need assistance, they will be less likely to steal from you.
There’s two sides to this equation as well. As retailers, our main focus is to drive sales. If your employee is engaging your customer, think of the potential add on sales that can be made. So not only is your employee doing their part to prevent shoplifting, they are boosting your bottom line. The best part of this… you don’t have to spend a single penny. This is one of the simplest ways to get your team motivated to prevent theft all while driving sales and helping your store meet sales expectations. If your store is known for great service, your customers will tell their friends. I’ve had long term customers tell me that they drive an extra 25 minutes to come to my store because they appreciate the level of service they receive.
Customer service is the most important of the three pillars of reducing losses from shoplifters. It’s a simple method for you to immediately implement and you will see a return on this investment on the very same day. Don’t let shoplifters take advantage of your store; provide them with exceptional service and you will be sure to see your losses decrease all while your sales go up!
For more information, contact us at Prevent Shoplifting, or call 1.770.426.0547
I come from a long line of retail professionals. I have been in the corporate loss prevention world for years, my dad owns a restaurant and my grandparents ran a grocery store for decades. During every family gathering and holiday the conversation seems to always turn to our jobs and we all trade stories of our funniest… or dumbest shoplifter stories. Last Independence Day, the family was together and grandpa began telling a story we’ve all heard probably 100 times. It involved an employee at his grocery store stealing bottles of vodka. One of my little cousins was hearing this for the first time and sternly asked us, “Isn’t there a bottle lock you could use?” What a little genius.
The year was 1967. My Grandpa had been running his own grocery store for 10 years, with the help of his wife and anyone that wanted to make an honest wage. The hours were long, the margins were slim, but being his own boss was all he ever dreamed about. Inside the store was a small, although very profitable, liquor section. My grandpa liked to brag about how he was the only person to stock high end scotch, whiskey and vodka for miles around. He not only stocked it, he sold the heck out of it. Liquor was a cash cow for him back then, and it still is for stores today. Liquor theft today costs retailers hundreds of thousands of dollars. It may have not been that much in my Grandpa’s store, but it was more than enough to get him to notice.
Over the course of a few weeks that summer, he began to notice that he was always out of stock on a certain brand of vodka, but his sales seemed to not show a profit. He couldn’t figure it out and eventually forgot about it while dealing with a hundred other problems in the store. One day while receiving a shipment of produce in the warehouse, he noticed one of his most tenured employees carrying two gallons of water to the loading dock. He watched as the employee poured the water out of the jugs and left the warehouse. He got pulled away again and forgot about what he saw until a few days later. He went back to that area of the warehouse and noticed a few boxes that were out of place. After moving them aside, he discovered about 20 empty bottles of his most expensive vodka. It all began to make sense to him now. He learned after watching for few days that his employee would empty the water, fill it with vodka and then leave the store after paying the $.20 for the water. If bottle locks had been invented back then, it would have saved him thousands of dollars in lost profit.
In today’s world, a bottle lock is the preferred method of retailers to secure their high end liquors. It’s a simple, cost effective solution that will prevent loss and lead to increased sales. They come in all types of sizes and styles that can fit any application out there. I’ve used them in several applications in my career and they really are a simple way to protect your product. So join me as we raise a glass to higher profits!
For more information, contact us: Bottle Locks, or call 1.770.426.0547
I come from a long line of retail professionals. I have been in the corporate loss prevention world for years, my dad owns a restaurant and my grandparents ran a grocery store for decades. During every family gathering and holiday the conversation seems to always turn to our jobs and we all trade stories of our funniest… or dumbest shoplifter stories. Last Independence Day, the family was together and grandpa began telling a story we’ve all heard probably 100 times. It involved an employee at his grocery store stealing bottles of vodka. One of my little cousins was hearing this for the first time and sternly asked us, “Isn’t there a bottle lock you could use?” What a little genius.
The year was 1967. My Grandpa had been running his own grocery store for 10 years, with the help of his wife and anyone that wanted to make an honest wage. The hours were long, the margins were slim, but being his own boss was all he ever dreamed about. Inside the store was a small, although very profitable, liquor section. My grandpa liked to brag about how he was the only person to stock high end scotch, whiskey and vodka for miles around. He not only stocked it, he sold the heck out of it. Liquor was a cash cow for him back then, and it still is for stores today. Liquor theft today costs retailers hundreds of thousands of dollars. It may have not been that much in my Grandpa’s store, but it was more than enough to get him to notice.
Over the course of a few weeks that summer, he began to notice that he was always out of stock on a certain brand of vodka, but his sales seemed to not show a profit. He couldn’t figure it out and eventually forgot about it while dealing with a hundred other problems in the store. One day while receiving a shipment of produce in the warehouse, he noticed one of his most tenured employees carrying two gallons of water to the loading dock. He watched as the employee poured the water out of the jugs and left the warehouse. He got pulled away again and forgot about what he saw until a few days later. He went back to that area of the warehouse and noticed a few boxes that were out of place. After moving them aside, he discovered about 20 empty bottles of his most expensive vodka. It all began to make sense to him now. He learned after watching for few days that his employee would empty the water, fill it with vodka and then leave the store after paying the $.20 for the water. If bottle locks had been invented back then, it would have saved him thousands of dollars in lost profit.
In today’s world, a bottle lock is the preferred method of retailers to secure their high end liquors. It’s a simple, cost effective solution that will prevent loss and lead to increased sales. They come in all types of sizes and styles that can fit any application out there. I’ve used them in several applications in my career and they really are a simple way to protect your product. So join me as we raise a glass to higher profits!
For more information, contact us at Bottle Locks, or call 1.770.426.0547
Have you ever been in a store on a Monday morning and wondered why the store was so blown up? Recovery had not been completed, stock piled up in the aisles, returns not put away? Maybe you decided to give them the benefit of the doubt by looking at their sales to see if they had an unusually busy weekend. I know that on several occasions, after looking at the sales reports, I still was in the dark as to why the store was in such terrible shape. That’s when I knew I needed to go to my VisiPlus people traffic counter reports.
The VisiPlus is a people traffic counter report. It breaks down day of the week and hour of the day to show how many people are coming into the store. Even though my sales had not been where I would have thought they should be in light of the disaster zone my stores had turned into, the people traffic counter was giving me an alternative view of what had happened.
I was seeing increases in the customer traffic, but the sales were not where they should be. I then learned that my stores had been understaffed. Payroll had been mismanaged through the week, leaving critical hours being cut or the weekend. Not only were there not enough employees to handle the customers to increase sales, but also the lack of payroll negatively affected the store’s presentation standards.
Had I not seen both the sales reports and the VisiPlus reports, I would not have been able to track down a very critical operational breakdown. It wasn’t that my managers and employees were not being productive enough to get the work done. It was that processes had been mismanaged throughout the week causing this secondary breakdown. I now knew exactly where to go to fix my store’s problems.
Have you ever been in a store on a Monday morning and wondered why the store was so blown up? Recovery had not been completed, stock piled up in the aisles, returns not put away? Maybe you decided to give them the benefit of the doubt by looking at their sales to see if they had an unusually busy weekend. I know that on several occasions, after looking at the sales reports, I still was in the dark as to why the store was in such terrible shape. That’s when I knew I needed to go to my VisiPlus people traffic counter reports.
The VisiPlus is a people traffic counter report. It breaks down day of the week and hour of the day to show how many people are coming into the store. Even though my sales had not been where I would have thought they should be in light of the disaster zone my stores had turned into, the people traffic counter was giving me an alternative view of what had happened.
I was seeing increases in the customer traffic, but the sales were not where they should be. I then learned that my stores had been understaffed. Payroll had been mismanaged through the week, leaving critical hours being cut on the weekend. Not only were there not enough employees to handle the customers to increase sales, but also the lack of payroll negatively affected the store’s presentation standards.
Had I not seen both the sales reports and the VisiPlus reports, I would not have been able to track down a very critical operational breakdown. It wasn’t that my managers and employees were not being productive enough to get the work done. It was that processes had been mismanaged throughout the week causing this secondary breakdown. I now knew exactly where to go to fix my store’s problems.
Do you normally make impulse decisions that could cost your business thousands of dollars, or do you look at all of the available data to ensure you make an informed decision? If you don’t like taking risks with the future of your business, why would you take a chance on hiring someone without first running background checks to review their past. Not many people would expect the well dressed and well-spoken interviewee to be a thief, but sometimes that’s just how things turn out.
In a perfect world, job candidates would walk in and give you an honest and full disclosure of their past. This is not even close to reality. There are not many people out there that are going to tell you something that could potentially hinder their chances of getting the job. They are secretly hoping that you don’t have a pre-employment screening process in place.
No matter what size your company is, you don’t want to judge a book by its cover when hiring your employees. It’s sometimes easy to be fooled by appearances. In some cases, it is the person who you would least suspect that will wind up robbing you blind. Whether you have five employees or 5,000 working for you, it’s never a good idea to trust only in your instincts when hiring your staff. A good background check is the best way to assure that you don’t hire criminals to represent your business.
You may not realize it, but some people seek jobs specifically to steal from their future employer. They will not only have the chance to lighten your wallet by stealing from you, but you will be paying them to do it. Some of them work by themselves, and others are a part of a much larger network. I have worked cases in the past in which the employee was just a small piece of the puzzle in regard to the role they played in their group. For example, I worked on an employee theft investigation that involved a single cashier that was not only taking cash from the register, but was having their friends come in and fill out fraudulent credit applications using false identities as well. It was later shown that she was also accepting counterfeit cash.
Some small business owners may think that this kind of activity would only happen at a massive store, which is not the case. Once these groups have a single person on the inside, the possibilities of what damage they can cause to a business are endless. We were lucky in this situation, because were able to work with multiple branches of law enforcement to identify others involved and close the case. Not every case has a good outcome though, sometimes they are gone before you even realize anything is happening.
While not all cases are that large in scope, for a small business a large loss could be crippling. I’m not trying to give you nightmares. I am trying to arm you with information that could help save you a lot of time and money by doing it right in the first place.
You can’t just assume that everyone you want to hire will be a good decision. Take the guesswork out of the process and run thorough background checks by using a reputable company that is known for pre-employment screening. These steps are necessary to avoid all of the headaches you could face if you don’t get them done for everyone you hire. Skipping the process is gambling with the success of your business, and the small costs involved are a tiny fraction of what you may wind up losing in the long run.
For more information contact us: (Background Checks) or call 1.770.426.0547
Do you normally make impulse decisions that could cost your business thousands of dollars, or do you look at all of the available data to ensure you make an informed decision? If you don’t like taking risks with the future of your business, why would you take a chance on hiring someone without first running background checks to review their past. Not many people would expect the well dressed and well-spoken interviewee to be a thief, but sometimes that’s just how things turn out.
In a perfect world, job candidates would walk in and give you an honest and full disclosure of their past. This is not even close to reality. There are not many people out there that are going to tell you something that could potentially hinder their chances of getting the job. They are secretly hoping that you don’t have a pre-employment screening process in place.
No matter what size your company is, you don’t want to judge a book by its cover when hiring your employees. It’s sometimes easy to be fooled by appearances. In some cases, it is the person who you would least suspect that will wind up robbing you blind. Whether you have five employees or 5,000 working for you, it’s never a good idea to trust only in your instincts when hiring your staff. A good background check is the best way to assure that you don’t hire criminals to represent your business.
You may not realize it, but some people seek jobs specifically to steal from their future employer. They will not only have the chance to lighten your wallet by stealing from you, but you will be paying them to do it. Some of them work by themselves, and others are a part of a much larger network. I have worked cases in the past in which the employee was just a small piece of the puzzle in regard to the role they played in their group. For example, I worked on an employee theft investigation that involved a single cashier that was not only taking cash from the register, but was having their friends come in and fill out fraudulent credit applications using false identities as well. It was later shown that she was also accepting counterfeit cash.
Some small business owners may think that this kind of activity would only happen at a massive store, which is not the case. Once these groups have a single person on the inside, the possibilities of what damage they can cause to a business are endless. We were lucky in this situation, because were able to work with multiple branches of law enforcement to identify others involved and close the case. Not every case has a good outcome though, sometimes they are gone before you even realize anything is happening.
While not all cases are that large in scope, for a small business a large loss could be crippling. I’m not trying to give you nightmares. I am trying to arm you with information that could help save you a lot of time and money by doing it right in the first place.
You can’t just assume that everyone you want to hire will be a good decision. Take the guesswork out of the process and run thorough background checks by using a reputable company that is known for pre-employment screening. These steps are necessary to avoid all of the headaches you could face if you don’t get them done for everyone you hire. Skipping the process is gambling with the success of your business, and the small costs involved are a tiny fraction of what you may wind up losing in the long run.
For more information contact us: Background Checks or call 1.770.426.0547
It’s that time of year again. The temperatures are getting cooler (or so my friends up North tell me), the days are getting shorter and there’s that clock ticking down to the start of the holiday shopping season. For most people, it’s a joyous time. Friends and family gathering are on the horizon, shopping for the perfect gifts for loved ones and doing what you can to spread a little cheer to your fellow man. If you run a retail store, it’s really about how you make the most sales in a very short time, with minimal loss, to end the year in the black. It probably also means using anti-shoplifting tools to secure the new, coolest products you are selling this year.
Every year it seems like my company invests more and more into the electronics category this time of year. These are not items we normally carry during the year, so item placement is scarce and our buying teams never really give any consideration to how easy they can be stolen. The store would be loaded with digital music players, GPS units, wireless speakers…etc, and they would be positioned throughout the store in a haphazard way, with no anti-shoplifting device installed. It was basically open season and thieves new it. This will be my 9th holiday season in retail and I can tell you that more of your “average Joes” steal during this time of year. These are people who would never consider stealing at any other time of the year, but with crowded stores and long lines (and in some cases, screaming little kids), you can see how one can quickly resort to shoplifting. This is also a time of year when parents feel they need to give their children an amazing experience, buy maybe financially, it would be impossible.
Every year for the past 9, I have worked on Christmas Eve. We close at 6pm, so I never really had a problem with it. 8 of those 9 years I have caught a shoplifter on this day. One that sticks out happened about two years ago. A lady came into the store and quickly began filling a basket with what, anyone would assume was her shopping list. When I walked past her bull buggy of toys, I noticed that the anti-shoplifting device on a pair of speakers had been removed. I let my team know and they began surveillance. It wasn’t long before she walked right out of the front door with her fully buggy, never once stopping to pay for the toys. It was Christmas Eve, but I still had a job to do. When we got to the security office she told us why she had did it. Her husband had just been killed overseas and she was without an income. The government was dragging its feet with her benefits and she had three children to look after. I couldn’t send this woman to jail, she wasn’t a bad person. Just a parent, lost and trying to make her children a little happier. When the police arrived, we declined to pursue any charges and explained to the officer why. He didn’t seem to care and our store actually donated some toys to her family.
For more information, contact us: KW, or call 1.770.426.0547
It’s that time of year again. The temperatures are getting cooler (or so my friends up North tell me), the days are getting shorter and there’s that clock ticking down to the start of the holiday shopping season. For most people, it’s a joyous time. Friends and family gatherings are on the horizon, shopping for the perfect gifts for loved ones and doing what you can to spread a little cheer to your fellow man. If you run a retail store, it’s really about how you make the most sales in a very short time, with minimal loss, to end the year in the black. It probably also means using anti-shoplifting tools to secure the new, coolest products you are selling this year.
Every year it seems like my company invests more and more into the electronics category this time of year. These are not items we normally carry during the year, so item placement is scarce and our buying teams never really give any consideration to how easy they can be stolen. The store would be loaded with digital music players, GPS units, wireless speakers…etc, and they would be positioned throughout the store in a haphazard way, with no anti-shoplifting device installed. It was basically open season and thieves new it. This will be my 9th holiday season in retail and I can tell you that more of your “average Joes” steal during this time of year. These are people who would never consider stealing at any other time of the year, but with crowded stores and long lines (and in some cases, screaming little kids), you can see how one can quickly resort to shoplifting. This is also a time of year when parents feel they need to give their children an amazing experience, buy maybe financially, it would be impossible.
Every year for the past 9, I have worked on Christmas Eve. We close at 6pm, so I never really had a problem with it. 8 of those 9 years I have caught a shoplifter on this day. One that sticks out happened about two years ago. A lady came into the store and quickly began filling a basket with what, anyone would assume was her shopping list. When I walked past her full buggy of toys, I noticed that the anti-shoplifting device on a pair of speakers had been removed. I let my team know and they began surveillance. It wasn’t long before she walked right out of the front door with her full buggy, never once stopping to pay for the toys. It was Christmas Eve, but I still had a job to do. When we got her to the security office she told us why she had did it. Her husband had just been killed overseas and she was without an income. The government was dragging its feet with her benefits and she had three children to look after. I couldn’t send this woman to jail, she wasn’t a bad person. Just a parent, lost and trying to make her children a little happier. When the police arrived, we declined to pursue any charges and explained to the officer why. He didn’t seem to care and our store actually donated some toys to her family.
For more information, contact us at Anti Shoplifting, or call 1.770.426.0547
