Sensormatic security Systems -3 WC Blog 712
Retail Theft Prevention -4
Retail Theft Prevention – Lessons For Those Considering A Career In Loss Prevention Part 3
How to detect shoplifters, pan-tilt-zoom cameras, closed circuit television and VCR’s (yeah, we didn’t have DVR’s then) and Sensormatic security systems were all the tools I learned to use as a Loss Prevention Associate. After four and a half years I moved into a position as a Loss Prevention Manager for a new store and found out how much I DIDN’T know about retail theft prevention. I also found I had to change my mindset about what Loss Prevention is really all about. Now, 28 years later I have my own advice to give that could make a leap into retail theft prevention a successful jump.
Security Officer, Police Officer or Something Else?
Let’s set the record straight right from the start. Do not go into Loss Prevention thinking you are a police officer. You may stop shoplifters and you might even put them in jail via a warrant or a police officer issued citation. You are not the police officer. You will have to learn to be diplomatic and you will have to sensitive. You may have to keep children from crying while doing paperwork on the apprehension of their mother. You have to be fair in how you handle every incident. You will have to keep calm while someone curses you out. Mess up and your actions can cost your store a lot of money. You should know that you are working to make the store and company more profitable. Go in with the mindset that you are there to reduce risk and optimize sales and profit. It changes how you will view your work.
Human Resources
Go into a Loss Prevention Manager position and be prepared to interview and hire people. As I mentioned in Part 2 surround yourself with people who can do what you can’t. If you don’t know how Sensormatic security systems work, hire someone who has experience with one. If you aren’t good at report writing find someone who has a background in clerical work or a degree in communications. This is not an easy step since it means you have to be honest with yourself about your own short comings. You may be called upon to help in new hire orientations. Be ready to brush up on public speaking skills. You will want to be the person that knows company policies and procedures because you may be investing dishonest employee activity. You may also have to assist the store in investigating worker’s comp. claims, and accident investigations. Knowledge of company policies can help your store minimize the risk of costly lawsuits.
Operations Expert
As a Loss Prevention professional, you need to know what affects the profitability of the store. It may be retail theft prevention, vendor shortages, operational errors on the front lanes or how empty shelves are influencing sales. YOU must know what stock shortage is and how it happens. Empty shelves mean lost money for the store. You should be the first person to notice and identify problems. Is there theft? Is there a breakdown in the stocking process? Are vendors causing issues? Learn about how a Sensormatic security systems can include a door counting sensor. Customer traffic counting data can be used to determine the time of day customers are shopping. Payroll can be more effectively managed to optimize customer service and sales (you could be a hero to a store manager). Loss Prevention Systems, Inc. can provide more details on how a door counting sensor can help a store if your manager is curious. You won’t know everything about shortage immediately but knowing that it involves more than just shoplifters and dishonest employees will prepare you in advance so you can start to learn it.
Counselor
I know this may sound odd to you but trust me you will have many co-workers and managers coming to you with gripes, complaints, concerns and gossip. These people trust you because they believe you will maintain confidentiality. You must be able to listen and give advice. You may get tips that will be useful in retail theft prevention but through casual conversation. You have to listen closely. Know when to stop a conversation and how to tell someone you have no choice but to refer something to another department (such as a report of assault or sexual misconduct).
I hope all of these tips will help you understand that the role of a Loss Prevention professional is more than just stopping shoplifters. You will be a jack-of- all- trades and if you do the job properly, you will learn more than you ever dreamed you would about running a retail store. Now go forth and make a store profitable!
Need information on Sensormatic Systems? Give us a call at 1.770.426.0547 today
How to detect shoplifters, pan-tilt-zoom cameras, closed circuit television and VCR’s (yeah, we didn’t have DVR’s then) and Sensormatic security systems were all the tools I learned to use as a Loss Prevention Associate. After four and a half years I moved into a position as a Loss Prevention Manager for a new store and found out how much I DIDN’T know about retail theft prevention. I also found I had to change my mindset about what Loss Prevention is really all about. Now, 28 years later I have my own advice to give that could make a leap into retail theft prevention a successful jump.
Security Officer, Police Officer or Something Else?
Let’s set the record straight right from the start. Do not go into Loss Prevention thinking you are a police officer. You may stop shoplifters and you might even put them in jail via a warrant or a police officer issued citation. You are not the police officer. You will have to learn to be diplomatic and you will have to sensitive. You may have to keep children from crying while doing paperwork on the apprehension of their mother. You have to be fair in how you handle every incident. You will have to keep calm while someone curses you out. Mess up and your actions can cost your store a lot of money. You should know that you are working to make the store and company more profitable. Go in with the mindset that you are there to reduce risk and optimize sales and profit. It changes how you will view your work.
Human Resources
Go into a Loss Prevention Manager position and be prepared to interview and hire people. As I mentioned in Part 2 surround yourself with people who can do what you can’t. If you don’t know how Sensormatic security systems work, hire someone who has experience with one. If you aren’t good at report writing find someone who has a background in clerical work or a degree in communications. This is not an easy step since it means you have to be honest with yourself about your own short comings. You may be called upon to help in new hire orientations. Be ready to brush up on public speaking skills. You will want to be the person that knows company policies and procedures because you may be investigating dishonest employee activity. You may also have to assist the store in investigating worker’s comp. claims, and accident investigations. Knowledge of company policies can help your store minimize the risk of costly lawsuits.
Operations Expert
As a Loss Prevention professional, you need to know what affects the profitability of the store. It may be retail theft prevention, vendor shortages, operational errors on the front lanes or how empty shelves are influencing sales. YOU must know what stock shortage is and how it happens. Empty shelves mean lost money for the store. You should be the first person to notice and identify problems. Is there theft? Is there a breakdown in the stocking process? Are vendors causing issues? Learn about how a Sensormatic security systems can include a door counting sensor. Customer traffic counting data can be used to determine the time of day customers are shopping. Payroll can be more effectively managed to optimize customer service and sales (you could be a hero to a store manager). Loss Prevention Systems, Inc. can provide more details on how a door counting sensor can help a store if your manager is curious. You won’t know everything about shortage immediately but knowing that it involves more than just shoplifters and dishonest employees will prepare you in advance so you can start to learn it.
Counselor
I know this may sound odd to you but trust me you will have many co-workers and managers coming to you with gripes, complaints, concerns and gossip. These people trust you because they believe you will maintain confidentiality. You must be able to listen and give advice. You may get tips that will be useful in retail theft prevention but through casual conversation. You have to listen closely. Know when to stop a conversation and how to tell someone you have no choice but to refer something to another department (such as a report of assault or sexual misconduct).
I hope all of these tips will help you understand that the role of a Loss Prevention professional is more than just stopping shoplifters. You will be a jack-of- all- trades and if you do the job properly, you will learn more than you ever dreamed you would about running a retail store. Now go forth and make a store profitable!
Need information on Sensormatic Systems? Give us a call at 1.770.426.0547 today
Sensormatic Safers – 4 WC Blog 737
Retail Anti-Theft Devices – 3
Don’t Irritate Customers With Poor Merchandise Protection – Use Sensormatic Safers Part 1
Of the top ways retailers can avoid irritating me, many of them can be avoided simply by using Sensormatic Safers. Oh, there are a lot of things that get on my nerves but here are some of the biggies. I will expound on what merchants can do to improve these areas in a minute.
• Recently I have had a dickens of a time finding a particular store brand of Dramamine for my wife. Every one of this company’s locations around my area has had empty shelves. That’s either a LOT of people with motion sickness, a poor job of getting back in stock or a theft issue.
• Stores with 20+ checklanes and only 6 open along with self-checkout stands and lines are queued up extending 5 or more customers deep.
• Stores that carry multiple brands of a specific item such as a flash drive or ink jet printer cartridge and choose to protect one brand but not the other against theft, what are they thinking?
• Dump bins of DVD’s that I believe are 4 feet deep as I nearly fall in trying like an idiot to find “a really good” movie…in a DUMP bin of DVD’s!
• Waiting to find an associate to unlock a locking peghook so I can purchase an Xbox game card that has NO value until it is rung up at the cash register.
Each of these things irks me and I find it is a good time to bring it up because they have all happened to me recently. What frustrates me as a former Loss Prevention Manager is that the use of retail anti-theft devices could prevent several of these irritants.
When it comes to merchandise accessibility putting products on a locking peghook is no different than using a locking showcase. If something is expensive enough to warrant the use of a locking peghook there is a better solution for your store. Sensormatic Safers provide the same level of protection (I would argue better and I will expand on that later) and they improve service for customers AND store personnel. As a Loss Prevention Manager I had the experience of using different retail anti-theft devices and one of those was the locking peghook. It was a good idea at the time. Shoplifters were able to just remove an item from a peg, take it somewhere in the store and hide it. Professional shoplifters in Organized Retail Crime (ORC) groups would sweep a peghook clean of ALL the items on it. Think about losing a peghook filled with $10 packs of lithium batteries…that can add up to a LOT of money. Locking peghooks allowed us to restrict access to the goods because they required an employee with a detachment key to open the hook and ring the purchase at the register. The problem is this is exactly what you do with a locking display case. Customers are forced to wait for an available associate who may be busy helping someone else and eventually that customer leaves. That is a huge blow to sales and it is also a good way to lose customers won’t return to your store.
Loss Prevention Systems, Inc. (LPSI) is a company that was built with the objective of helping retail owners stop theft and also improve sales. Bill Bregar, who founded LPSI was in the Retail Loss Prevention field for years as a National Director of Loss Prevention for several large retailers. He keeps abreast of the best retail anti-theft devices on the market and recommends them to his clients to help them get the best protection and improve upon the service offered by the store. Both are used to foster reduced shortage and increased sales. One of the products recently added to the list of recommendations are Sensormatic Safers. These devices have electronic article surveillance (EAS) technology embedded in them so that stores equipped with Sensormatic towers at their doors will activate alarms if a Safer protected item is carried too close to the towers. Don’t worry of you don’t have a Sensormatic security system, LPSI can help you with that too. If you are fretting over the cost of a system don’t, visit their website and checkout the ROI Calculator. It is an amazing tool that is free to use and will show you how affordable a system is.
In Part 2, I will discuss more about the advantages of Sensormatic Safers versus trying to use alternative protections like showcases and locking peghooks. Suffice it to say if I am frustrated waiting for service for a locked up item there are more me’s out there and they may have shorter fuses than I do. Do yourself a favor, read Part 2 of this series and see how a Safer can boost sales and reduce theft.
Get more information on Sensormatic Safers, contact us or call 1.770.426.0547 today.
Of the top ways retailers can avoid irritating me, many of them can be avoided simply by using Sensormatic Safers. Oh, there are a lot of things that get on my nerves but here are some of the biggies. I will expound on what merchants can do to improve these areas in a minute.
• Recently I have had a dickens of a time finding a particular store brand of Dramamine for my wife. Every one of this company’s locations around my area has had empty shelves. That’s either a LOT of people with motion sickness, a poor job of getting back in stock or a theft issue.
• Stores with 20+ checklanes and only 6 open along with self-checkout stands and lines are queued up extending 5 or more customers deep.
• Stores that carry multiple brands of a specific item such as a flash drive or ink jet printer cartridge and choose to protect one brand but not the other against theft, what are they thinking?
• Dump bins of DVD’s that I believe are 4 feet deep as I nearly fall in trying like an idiot to find “a really good” movie…in a DUMP bin of DVD’s!
• Waiting to find an associate to unlock a locking peghook so I can purchase an Xbox game card that has NO value until it is rung up at the cash register.
Each of these things irks me and I find it is a good time to bring it up because they have all happened to me recently. What frustrates me as a former Loss Prevention Manager is that the use of retail anti-theft devices could prevent several of these irritants.
When it comes to merchandise accessibility putting products on a locking peghook is no different than using a locking showcase. If something is expensive enough to warrant the use of a locking peghook there is a better solution for your store. Sensormatic Safers provide the same level of protection (I would argue better and I will expand on that later) and they improve service for customers AND store personnel. As a Loss Prevention Manager I had the experience of using different retail anti-theft devices and one of those was the locking peghook. It was a good idea at the time. Shoplifters were able to just remove an item from a peg, take it somewhere in the store and hide it. Professional shoplifters in Organized Retail Crime (ORC) groups would sweep a peghook clean of ALL the items on it. Think about losing a peghook filled with $10 packs of lithium batteries…that can add up to a LOT of money. Locking peghooks allowed us to restrict access to the goods because they required an employee with a detachment key to open the hook and ring the purchase at the register. The problem is this is exactly what you do with a locking display case. Customers are forced to wait for an available associate who may be busy helping someone else and eventually that customer leaves. That is a huge blow to sales and it is also a good way to lose customers who won’t return to your store.
Loss Prevention Systems, Inc. (LPSI) is a company that was built with the objective of helping retail owners stop theft and also improve sales. Bill Bregar, who founded LPSI was in the Retail Loss Prevention field for years as a National Director of Loss Prevention for several large retailers. He keeps abreast of the best retail anti-theft devices on the market and recommends them to his clients to help them get the best protection and improve upon the service offered by the store. Both are used to foster reduced shortage and increased sales. One of the products recently added to the list of recommendations are Sensormatic Safers. These devices have electronic article surveillance (EAS) technology embedded in them so that stores equipped with Sensormatic towers at their doors will activate alarms if a Safer protected item is carried too close to the towers. Don’t worry of you don’t have a Sensormatic security system, LPSI can help you with that too. If you are fretting over the cost of a system don’t, visit their website and checkout the ROI Calculator. It is an amazing tool that is free to use and will show you how affordable a system is.
In Part 2, I will discuss more about the advantages of Sensormatic Safers versus trying to use alternative protections like showcases and locking peghooks. Suffice it to say if I am frustrated waiting for service for a locked up item there are more me’s out there and they may have shorter fuses than I do. Do yourself a favor, read Part 2 of this series and see how a Safer can boost sales and reduce theft.
Get more information on Sensormatic Safers, contact us or call 1.770.426.0547 today.
Clothing Security Blog
Clothing Security In An Apparel Store
Are you having clothing security issues from shoplifting in your apparel store? The solution to this issue is a two step process. You must adopt both steps as one is useless without the other. But before you can implement those steps, you have to do something else. You must make the commitment to clothing security or any other retail segment security and be willing to make this a permanent part of your business. When I was Director of Loss Prevention for several major retailers, I would ask Operations Management for simply 3% of their time on a daily basis. That’s it, 3% or 18 minutes of their 10 hour day dedicated to shoplifting prevention. You can do the same. If you do, I assure you that your shoplifting losses will drop significantly.
So what should you do in that 18 minutes? Glad you asked!
First and foremost is train and reemphasize shoplifting prevention techniques to your team. Teaching them is one thing but reminding them on a constant basis until it becomes second nature will drive shoplifters away and increase your customer service to good customers. The premise of this is simple, good customers love customer service, shoplifters hate it. If you are providing good customer service and a customer is resisting that then this should be an immediate red flag. In that case what should you do? Well, provide even more customer service! This may involve staying at a discrete distance and keeping an eye on them. A shoplifter will hate this but a good customer will either be indifferent or pay little attention.
The reason they hate this is that shoplifters must have privacy to steal from you, if only for a few seconds. Deny them that and, do it consistently and they will go elsewhere to steal. Shoplifters will steal where they have the least interference. However, that leads us to the next step.
The second step is to add a Sensormatic system to your store. And as a shameless plug, yes, Loss Prevention Systems sells Sensormatic systems. Now that we have that out of the way, let us get back to the issue at hand.
You and your staff cannot be everywhere at once. From an economic standpoint we cannot spend as much payroll as we would like or know we should. So, you need an edge. A Sensormatic system at the customer doors and tags and/or labels on your merchandise will cover your sales floor during those frequent times that shoplifters either look for or even create. If a shoplifter picks up a piece of your merchandise with a clothing security tag on it and they try to leave the store, the Sensormatic system will go into alarm, alerting you and your staff.
Clothing security tags are easy for your staff to apply and they are easy for your staff to remove. Not so much for a shoplifter. If they try to remove your clothing security tags, they will damage the merchandise. We even have Sensormatic tags that have ink vials inside. If a significant amount of pressure is put on the ink tag. then the vials break and ruin the merchandise. Routine handling of an ink tag will not cause it to release ink. But apply a tool to it and, well you get the idea.
Sensormatic tags have some of the highest quality in the industry. Sensormatic systems are commercial grade and go through extensive testing both for tag detection and wear and tear in the toughest retail environments. All of this combines to keep both your payroll dollars and inventory shrink low and sales higher. Because if you have the merchandise to sell because shoplifters cannot steal it, you are more profitable.
Loss Prevention Systems will also provide you with the live training you need for you and your staff, as often as you need it. So let’s fix your shoplifting problems once and for all.
Clothing Security is important to us. Contact us today at 1770-426-0547.
Are you having clothing security issues from shoplifting in your apparel store? The solution to this issue is a two step process. You must adopt both steps as one is useless without the other. But before you can implement those steps, you have to do something else. You must make the commitment to clothing security or any other retail segment security and be willing to make this a permanent part of your business. When I was Director of Loss Prevention for several major retailers, I would ask Operations Management for simply 3% of their time on a daily basis. That’s it, 3% or 18 minutes of their 10 hour day dedicated to shoplifting prevention. You can do the same. If you do, I assure you that your shoplifting losses will drop significantly.
So what should you do in that 18 minutes? Glad you asked!
First and foremost is train and reemphasize shoplifting prevention techniques to your team. Teaching them is one thing but reminding them on a constant basis until it becomes second nature will drive shoplifters away and increase your customer service to good customers. The premise of this is simple, good customers love customer service, shoplifters hate it. If you are providing good customer service and a customer is resisting that then this should be an immediate red flag. In that case what should you do? Well, provide even more customer service! This may involve staying at a discrete distance and keeping an eye on them. A shoplifter will hate this but a good customer will either be indifferent or pay little attention.
The reason they hate this is that shoplifters must have privacy to steal from you, if only for a few seconds. Deny them that and, do it consistently and they will go elsewhere to steal. Shoplifters will steal where they have the least interference. However, that leads us to the next step.
The second step is to add a Sensormatic system to your store. And as a shameless plug, yes, Loss Prevention Systems sells Sensormatic systems. Now that we have that out of the way, let us get back to the issue at hand.
You and your staff cannot be everywhere at once. From an economic standpoint we cannot spend as much payroll as we would like or know we should. So, you need an edge. A Sensormatic system at the customer doors and tags and/or labels on your merchandise will cover your sales floor during those frequent times that shoplifters either look for or even create. If a shoplifter picks up a piece of your merchandise with a clothing security tag on it and they try to leave the store, the Sensormatic system will go into alarm, alerting you and your staff.
Clothing security tags are easy for your staff to apply and they are easy for your staff to remove. Not so much for a shoplifter. If they try to remove your clothing security tags, they will damage the merchandise. We even have Sensormatic tags that have ink vials inside. If a significant amount of pressure is put on the ink tag. then the vials break and ruin the merchandise. Routine handling of an ink tag will not cause it to release ink. But apply a tool to it and, well you get the idea.
Sensormatic tags have some of the highest quality in the industry. Sensormatic systems are commercial grade and go through extensive testing both for tag detection and wear and tear in the toughest retail environments. All of this combines to keep both your payroll dollars and inventory shrink low and sales higher. Because if you have the merchandise to sell because shoplifters cannot steal it, you are more profitable.
Loss Prevention Systems will also provide you with the live training you need for you and your staff, as often as you need it. So let’s fix your shoplifting problems once and for all.
Clothing Security is important to us. Contact us today at 1770-426-0547.
