When you operate a small business that sells wines and spirits, you need impulse buys.  People come in, and are about to buy a bargain bottle, then see the higher retail premium bottle they have seen advertised, and decide to buy it instead because it is a chance to splurge on themselves.  Impulse buys are great, but impulse theft of those same bottles can eat a hole in your bottom line at a fast pace.  Bottle Locks can provide your store with a method to merchandise those bottles where they can be seen, without the fear of them being stolen.

You as the retailer have to make the choice of how to display your high theft brands of wine and spirits.  As the manager or owner, you do not want any of your bottles just walking out the door unpaid, no matter the price tag.  Your low price bottles can become a problem in large quantity losses, but they don’t add up as quickly as your premium brands.  A benefit of Bottle Locks is they do not discriminate whether or not to protect your inventory.  They come in many sizes, and secure all brands.  The customer can still pick up the bottles, compare them, make their choice, and bring them to the checkout area when they are ready.  

You could make the choice to display behind your counters or in glass cases.  This requires additional storage space, the added expense of building or buying shelves and parts, and more labor for the employees.  This also takes away the impulse buy.  When you lock up all the good stuff, the customer does not get to have that moment of satisfaction and the feeling they are treating themselves.  Taking away the customer’s ability to make the quick decision has the potential to  cost you a lot of extra profits.  Customers come in and make their selections.  Then they get to the front and see that the more popular bottles, and bigger name brands are behind the counter, or behind glass.  They see that some of those bottles may be a higher retail than what they have brought to the checkout, so now they have to make the choice before paying, whether they want to exchange their selection for something else, or just stick with what they have.  Customers are more likely to just keep what they chose, rather than bother to ask the clerk for another brand.  In most cases they simply do not want to have to return the first bottle to the shelf, or even ask the employee to do it for them.   

Again, Bottle Locks give that fun part back and let them make the choice out on the floor.  When you have a small business every dollar counts.  There are the people that come in with a plan of what to buy, those that saw your store and just pulled in out of the blue, and even tourists.  Put the impulse back into the customer’s hands, keep your bottles safely out on the sales floor, and you will probably see your profits on the rise.

For more information contact us at: Bottlelock.net or call 1.770.426.0547

Have you ever been walking you’re the sales floor of your store and come across an article of clothing that looks vaguely familiar? It might look like a faded, worn out, shrunken version of something that you sell. But this isn’t for sale, right? This better be going to the lost and found! But sadly, it has a merchandise tag on it. Who in their right mind would buy this item at full price? Furthermore, how did it get onto your sales floor in this condition? Sounds like you’ve been wardrobed. There are a few good, tools, along with some very helpful best practices that can be used to prevent this from happening to you, to keep your store and your brand up to its best reputation, and to maintain your best profitability while keeping wardrobing out of your store.

One good first line of defense is an anti-wardrobing tag. Checkpoint offers a security device called the shark tag. Alpha Shark tags easily attach to any clothing item with a small pin. The device is designed for removal at home before wearing, so this device is not removed by the salesperson at the point of sale. Basically, if an item is returned with the shark tag missing, it can be assumed to have been worn. To make the most effective use of these tags, they should be placed in a conspicuous area so that if a wardrober would have a difficult time wearing the item with the tag in place. However, the shark tags are of little use without an effective return policy.

Having a customer-friendly return policy that your employees and business can stand behind is very important for implementing clothing security and profitability. Without a policy in place, the usefulness of the shark tags diminishes. For example, if there is no return policy in place requiring shark tags to be on return items that are required to have them, then they make no difference to wardrobers; they would be able to remove them and return them without the tags anyway! In addition, it is typically a good idea to have a certain window within which the item may be returned. This will not only prevent people from using clothing for a period of time and then returning it, but it will also keep you from getting outdated fashions coming back into the store—items that you won’t be able to make a dime off of. Finally, a good policy typically includes regulations against washed and worn items. If the items appear faded, stained, or smell like laundry detergent, it is usually in your business’s best interest not to allow a return.

The last, but certainly not least most important action to prevent wardrobing is abiding by the return policy. Many big-box retail stores have sound refund and return policies that are implemented inconsistently. The difference is, these big-box stores can typically afford to return a few items here and there that cannot be resold. Likewise, consistent communication to thousands of employees is far more difficult. To protect your business, it is important to implement a policy that can be executed nearly 100% of the time. Sure, there will always be exceptions but a return policy is only as good as the employees who enforce it. It would be wise to ensure everyone is on the same page with refunds. That goes for both employees and customers!

For more information contact us: Wardrobing or call 1.770.426.0547

It wasn’t that long ago that I found myself racking my brains over the amount of theft I was seeing in my shoe department. Day in and day out, I was finding empty boxes, defeated EAS pins and old dirty shoes. I was adjusting out anywhere between $1k-$2k every single day. I was bleeding, and I had to stop it. What more could I do, though? I had a great Checkpoint System installed, had cameras, an LP team and a very engaged staff. I had narrowed my losses down to external theft, so I knew it wasn’t coming from the warehouse, or one of my employees. I needed to stop the losses, so I began testing different Checkpoint Tags. 

For as long as I could remember, I used a standard pencil tag on my footwear that retailed for $99 and up. They seemed to do the job, but I’d still find defeated tags constantly. I needed a better deterrent, and I found it with Checkpoint Tags. After playing with a few different types of tags, I stumbled across the ink tags. At first, I was a bit weary, as I didn’t want my legitimate shoppers to inadvertently have ink splashed in their faces. I quickly learned that isn’t the case and the tags are mainly used as a deterrent… meaning the tag is effective because the thief thinks he may be sprayed with ink. In addition, these tags worked with the Checkpoint System that was already installed in the store, so I didn’t have to spend any additional capital to implement the new program. 

Once I got a handful of the ink tags in, I instructed my store to hard tag all footwear with the new Checkpoint Tag with a retail price of $79 and up. We placed the tag right through the tongue of the shoe, were it was clearly visible to a would-be thief. Best part? It didn’t interfere with the honest customer at all. The results were almost immediate. Our thieves wouldn’t risk damaging their boosted goods and our losses dropped to about one single pair, or two per week. A substantial reduction in loss, all thanks to our Checkpoint System. 

Eventually, we rolled this program out to our entire company and within two years, we saw a dramatic decrease in footwear shrink across the board. Not only did this help us minimize shrink, it also lead to higher sales, since we had the shoes in stock that the customer wanted to purchase!

For more information, contact us: Checkpoint Tags, or call 1.770.426.0547