In some recent articles, I’ve talked a lot about Organized Retail Crime (ORC). In the LP industry, we are far too familiar with this term. For those who may not be, it’s exactly what it reads. Groups of organized individuals whose sole purpose on Earth is to steal from you and resell to make a profit. Some of these guys probably make 5x as much as you and I do in a year, so think about how much product these groups are stealing on a daily basis to support that number. In my experience, the only way to stop them from impacting your store is to have a solid checkpoint system in place, and use checkpoint labels on every item that is being targeted. 

What I’ve seen over the past few years is a growing trend of over the counter (OTC) medication. I’ve tracked ORC groups across multiple states where they would come into my stores and literally wipe out an entire shelf of OTC pain medication, allergen and just about whatever else they could get their hands on. As a retailer, there’s no way I could lock that stuff up; it would destroy my sales. I also didn’t have the payroll to have an employee go unlock a case every time a customer in a pharmacy wanted headache medicine. What I had to do, and what all retailers should do is leverage the tools you already have in your store, such as a checkpoint system, to fight back. If you’re a small store, you probably don’t have a loss prevention team in store, so doing what you can to fight thieves it critical of your financial success. 

Currently, there are about 35 different checkpoint labels on the market. Most are overt labels that provide a deterrent factor to your everyday shoplifter. If I’m a theift, chances are, I won’t’ take that bottle of ibuprofen if I know there’s a chance the tag will sound the alarm at the door. That’s not going to stop an ORC group. They simple don’t care about your checkpoint system and the alarm seems to not phase them one bit. What can you do?

In my years in the Loss Prevention industry, I’ve seen one thing stop boosters in their tracks. A checkpoint label that includes the exact store where the merchandise was sold at. Due to the adhesive quality of the label, you can’t peel them off without the product looking like it was stolen. In addition, having the store location provides law enforcement with great information should the product be recovered after the theft. These boosters know that and are unwilling to take the risk that could cost them their operation. It’s a very simple, easy and cost effective solution to OTC medication theft that all retailers should implement. 

For more information, contact us: KW, or call 1.770.426.0547

Do you spend your days worrying about theft, and wake up in a cold sweat night after night with nightmares about shoplifters cleaning off your clothing racks and leaving only empty hangers behind? Besides getting a hobby and possibly visiting a doctor, my advice to you would be to invest in clothing security as soon as possible.  There is no need to worry, there are plenty of solutions for reducing theft in your store.  Although you might be tempted to put all of your clothes in a locked showcase, I don’t think that your customers would find that decision very practical or convenient for their needs.  Instead, keep them on the racks where they belong, so your customers can experience them before buying.  

The majority of shoplifters will be deterred by the sight of security tags on clothes, so it’s a good idea to make sure you use them to protect your inventory.  Shoplifters don’t want to spend the time trying to remove the tags and attract all kinds of attention while they are trying to do it.  If you are going to use clothing security tags, please be thorough.  Nothing irritates me more than when I am in a store and I see a rack of clothes with some items tagged and others not tagged, specifically when they are the same exact garment.  This doesn’t make any sense to do this, so you should confirm that all of your employees know that it is unacceptable.  After all, which item would you take if you were a shoplifter, items with Checkpoint tags on them, or items without them?  It’s a no brainer.  

Be prepared to experience a shift in the kind of merchandise that is stolen once you are using clothing security tags.  Shoplifters will be sure to take advantage of the merchandise that is not protected.  When thieves see that certain items such as high dollar clothing is protected, they will start trying to steal other items in the store.  They may start to target the cheaper merchandise just to get around the extra protection, or different types of merchandise altogether.  You will have to keep an eye on this activity as well, because even though the dollar amounts may be lower, the quantity of items stolen may amount to a lot of money as well.  They might steal ten of a lower cost item, but it could add up to the same amount of loss as a more expensive item.  

Though most shoplifters are deterred by clothing security measures, some shoplifters will still steal whether or not you have security tags on clothes or not.  They know the alarm will go off at the door when they exit the store with the clothes, but they still load up on the merchandise and head out the door.  These kinds of thefts are not usually committed by ordinary shoplifters, but professional shoplifters that steal to later sell the merchandise for profit.  This type of theft is less common than the average shoplifting case, and best deterred by customer service.  Keep your employees looking for suspicious behaviors while they are working and offering assistance whenever a customer is anywhere near them.  Customer service and merchandise protection together will help deter theft in your store and raise your profits.  

For more information contact us: (clothing security) or call 1.770.426.0547

Using Checkpoint Tags to protect your merchandise is a cost efficient method of securing almost all of the merchandise found in retail stores.   There are several different types of anti-shoplifting devices on the market for all different kinds of merchandise, but these tags are one of the most versatile options if you are unsure what would be right for your store.  Depending on what type of merchandise you sell in your store, you could use soft tags, that you can stick on pretty much anything, or hard tags which allow you to reuse them over and over again.  The hard tags can also be used with other accessories such as lanyards or other devices made to attach to merchandise that can be used together with the tags to help stop shoplifting.   

A while back, I worked at a store that had a problem with numerous amounts of cosmetics items disappearing from the shelves.  We identified the problem by scanning shelf labels of merchandise that was either out of stock or very low.  While researching, we discovered that some of the merchandise had recently been received, but we were somehow already out of stock.  We then checked sales on those particular items, and found that they hadn’t been sold.   So that only left a couple of possible explanations as to what happened to the missing merchandise. One explanation is that the merchandise was received, and instead of making its way to the shelves on the sales floor, it was sitting in the stockroom somewhere without being located in the system.  The next explanation was that the merchandise was actually stocked, and then stolen by a shoplifter or employee.  One thing that was strange was that most of the merchandise that was missing had Checkpoint Tags or other anti-shoplifting devices attached to them.  

Around the same time, we also were missing entertainment products such as video games and DVDs.  We performed the same research processes to identify the origin of the loss, but were unsuccessful.  The next thing I did was start to review many hours of video in from the cosmetics and entertainment areas.  I was lucky enough to observe a woman selecting several cosmetic items and placing them into a shopping cart.  Her shopping cart had other items in it, such as storage bins and bagged comforter.  I continued reviewing video and found that the same woman also selected video games and put them into the shopping cart.  After that, she went to an area of the store which was lacking camera coverage.  The next time she appeared on camera, she was at the front registers paying for the comforter and storage bins, but the cosmetics and video games where nowhere in sight. I also noticed that the lights on the EAS antennas at the front were flashing as she exited the store, but no one responded to the alarm, and she kept walking out of the store.

Sure enough, a few weeks later, the same woman came into the store and did the same exact thing.  This time I was watching her.  It turned out that she was putting a layer of video games between a stack of storage bins, and she concealed the cosmetics items by opening the zipper to the comforter and placing the cosmetics in the folds of the comforter, so that it couldn’t be seen.  She admitted to stealing with that method several times, and after that, we used hard Checkpoint Tags with a lanyard to keep the comforter zippers closed, only allowing a single finger space to feel the fabric inside.  We also followed up with the cashiers to ensure they are looking inside always (L.I.S.A.) when ringing up storage bins or other merchandise that could hide items inside.  

For more information contact us: (Checkpoint Tags) or call 1.770.426.0547