Clothing security-3 WC Blog 579
Checkpoint Tags-3
Shrinking Clothing Shortage With Checkpoint Tags
Sometimes we need facts and statistics to help us understand why something needs to be treated with importance and clothing security is no different. If you are a retail owner selling any type of clothing lines you should find the following statistics from the 2017 National Retail Federation’s National Retail Security Survey interesting and disturbing:
• Inventory shrink for the apparel sector grew from 1.2% in 2016 to 1.36% in 2017 (pg.8)
• 15 of 26 apparel respondents to the survey said shrink had grown in their stores (pg.8)
• In apparel, both shoplifting (41%) and employee theft (35.5%) were higher than the overall average for retailers (pg. 8)
• In apparel only 4 of 22 respondents expect to have a higher LP budget in 2017 while 9 expect flat budgets and 2 expect lower budgets (pg. 9)
• Apparel had an average loss of $1,132 per dishonest employee (pg. 14)
• The average shoplifting incident in apparel was $974.37 (pg. 15)
• In apparel the average cost of return fraud was $968.81 (pg. 16)
Apparel retailers appear to be getting hammered from all sides when the numbers are examined. Inventory shrink is growing, shoplifting and employee theft are both increasing and it appears Loss Prevention budgets are staying flat or decreasing. The survey was taken using retail LP professionals, which means these were stores that are large enough to have an LP department of some type. Loss Prevention Systems Inc. founder and CEO Bill Bregar is concerned by theft in all retail locations but his company especially focuses on providing services to the small retail businesses. The national apparel chain stores are struggling with clothing security. How much more is the little guy which cannot afford a security staff? Bill suggests ALL retailers use Checkpoint tags on the clothes they sell, including the little guy.
Checkpoint tags and Electronic Article Surveillance (EAS) pedestals are part of a larger system designed to discourage shoplifting and employee theft. The tags pin to the garment and can only be removed with a special detachment tool controlled by the store. Tags have integrated coils that continuously send out radio frequency (rf) waves. Merchandise that is tagged is picked up by the pedestals acting as rf receivers. Walk out with goods protected by a tag and the pedestal alarm blasts out an alert that can be heard throughout the largest stores. Shoplifters enter a store with a pedestal and they become much more cautious knowing they may set off an alarm if they steal. The thief looks at merchandise and sees everything has a Checkpoint tag and they usually make the choice to leave the store alone. For the foolhardy criminal who chooses to test the system, they set off the alarm when they walk up with tagged products. Often the result is dropped merchandise but when it isn’t, a quick response from trained employees is enough to conduct receipt checks and merchandise is retrieved. Though I have referenced shoplifters, employees who may consider stealing face the same obstacles if they make a decision to take something without paying. EAS makes no distinction between a crooked employee and a crooked customer.
So you may be wondering if a store that has an EAS system must also have security staff to answer alarms. The answer is no. I was a Loss Prevention Manager for a company that had numerous changes to our security teams. Sometimes I had a budget that allowed me ample people to staff the front of the store and to walk the floor seeking out shoplifters. At other times, I had little or no budget for a person to staff the front end. I always had to train store employees, usually cashiers and front-end supervisors to be prepared to respond to alarms. They were not apprehending anyone they were just trained to conduct thorough receipt and package checks. They resolved alarm activations caused by clothing security tags or other retail anti-theft devices. With training, employees who are not Loss Prevention Specialists are quite capable of handling an alarm and recovering unpaid merchandise. You don’t have to have an Loss Prevention staff to have an effective Checkpoint System.
Shoplifting and employee theft do not seem to be going away. Retail shrink, especially in the apparel sector continues to climb at a higher rate than that of other retail markets. If national chain stores continue to experience such losses then you can be sure your business will be impacted as well. Use Checkpoint tags on your clothing goods and add Checkpoint towers at your entry and exit doors and you will dramatically reduce theft in your store. The result will be declining shortage and that means more profit for your business.
Clothing security is important and we can help you with it. Call 1.770.426.0547 and let’s talk.
Sometimes we need facts and statistics to help us understand why something needs to be treated with importance and clothing security is no different. If you are a retail owner selling any type of clothing lines you should find the following statistics from the 2017 National Retail Federation’s National Retail Security Survey interesting and disturbing:
• Inventory shrink for the apparel sector grew from 1.2% in 2016 to 1.36% in 2017 (pg.8)
• 15 of 26 apparel respondents to the survey said shrink had grown in their stores (pg.8)
• In apparel, both shoplifting (41%) and employee theft (35.5%) were higher than the overall average for retailers (pg. 8)
• In apparel only 4 of 22 respondents expect to have a higher LP budget in 2017 while 9 expect flat budgets and 2 expect lower budgets (pg. 9)
• Apparel had an average loss of $1,132 per dishonest employee (pg. 14)
• The average shoplifting incident in apparel was $974.37 (pg. 15)
• In apparel the average cost of return fraud was $968.81 (pg. 16)
Apparel retailers appear to be getting hammered from all sides when the numbers are examined. Inventory shrink is growing, shoplifting and employee theft are both increasing and it appears Loss Prevention budgets are staying flat or decreasing. The survey was taken using retail LP professionals, which means these were stores that are large enough to have an LP department of some type. Loss Prevention Systems Inc. founder and CEO Bill Bregar is concerned by theft in all retail locations but his company especially focuses on providing services to the small retail businesses. The national apparel chain stores are struggling with clothing security. How much more is the little guy which cannot afford a security staff? Bill suggests ALL retailers use clothing tags on the clothes they sell, including the little guy.
Clothing tags and Electronic Article Surveillance (EAS) pedestals are part of a larger system designed to discourage shoplifting and employee theft. The tags pin to the garment and can only be removed with a special detachment tool controlled by the store. Tags have integrated coils that continuously send out radio frequency (rf) waves. Merchandise that is tagged is picked up by the pedestals acting as rf receivers. Walk out with goods protected by a tag and the pedestal alarm blasts out an alert that can be heard throughout the largest stores. Shoplifters enter a store with a pedestal and they become much more cautious knowing they may set off an alarm if they steal. The thief looks at merchandise and sees everything has a hard tag and they usually make the choice to leave the store alone. For the foolhardy criminal who chooses to test the system, they set off the alarm when they walk up with tagged products. Often the result is dropped merchandise but when it isn’t, a quick response from trained employees is enough to conduct receipt checks and merchandise is retrieved. Though I have referenced shoplifters, employees who may consider stealing face the same obstacles if they make a decision to take something without paying. EAS makes no distinction between a crooked employee and a crooked customer.
So you may be wondering if a store that has an EAS system must also have security staff to answer alarms. The answer is no. I was a Loss Prevention Manager for a company that had numerous changes to our security teams. Sometimes I had a budget that allowed me ample people to staff the front of the store and to walk the floor seeking out shoplifters. At other times, I had little or no budget for a person to staff the front end. I always had to train store employees, usually cashiers and front-end supervisors to be prepared to respond to alarms. They were not apprehending anyone they were just trained to conduct thorough receipt and package checks. They resolved alarm activations caused by clothing security tags or other retail anti-theft devices. With training, employees who are not Loss Prevention Specialists are quite capable of handling an alarm and recovering unpaid merchandise. You don’t have to have an Loss Prevention staff to have an effective EAS System.
Shoplifting and employee theft do not seem to be going away. Retail shrink, especially in the apparel sector continues to climb at a higher rate than that of other retail markets. If national chain stores continue to experience such losses then you can be sure your business will be impacted as well. Use clothing tags on your clothing goods and add EAS towers at your entry and exit doors and you will dramatically reduce theft in your store. The result will be declining shortage and that means more profit for your business.
Clothing security is important and we can help you with it. Call 1.770.426.0547 and let’s talk.
Loss Prevention Calculator-3 WC Blog 573
Can Loss Prevention Be Free?-3
Rethinking Loss Prevention With The Loss Prevention Calculator
In the Retail Loss Prevention field we are constantly looking at return on investment. We look at equipment costs, the investment of time to do certain tasks and investment in people. We analyze information and I think how convenient it would be to have a Loss Prevention Calculator that could do all the number crunching for us. While we look at the information with the thought, “What will this investment save us in the long term?” rarely do we think in terms of can Loss Prevention Be Free? We just aren’t trained to think like that. We talk about shortage reduction but it is almost unheard of to speak in absolutes in Loss Prevention like talking about shortage elimination. Sometimes the problem is not with what we are discussing it is how we are asking the questions. We have to rethink how we are problem solving. I will give you a perfect example. Bill Bregar, the CEO of Loss Prevention Systems Inc. comes from an extensive background in the Retail Loss Prevention field. He has dealt with the same issues the rest of us have dealt with and many of us have years and years of Loss Prevention experience like Bill does. What Bill has done is rephrased a question we all ask but the answer reveals a better way of thinking about a problem. That problem is the cost of a Loss Prevention System for a store.
Before I go on it is a good time to remember that there are some readers who are not as familiar with what a Loss Prevention System is. A system is an electronic article surveillance package consisting of towers, tags, specialty detachment keys and/or deactivation pads. The system works by deterrence and recovery of merchandise through receipt checks initiated due to alarm activations. Tags are constantly transmitting radio frequency waves and when a crook tries to leave with a tagged item the towers sense that wave and alarms are triggered in the towers. Store associates quickly respond, check the “customer’s” receipt and recover the unpaid goods. Frequently those persons who intend to shoplift have a change of heart when they see the towers at the doors to the store or when they find they cannot get a tag off of an item. The value of the system is clear to store owners when they see the shelves remaining full and the number of count adjustments greatly reduced.
Returning to my original point about how the rephrasing of a question changes the way we evaluate something. When I was a Loss Prevention Manager, if I asked for an additional closed circuit camera I might get a question in response. Like, “How many internals will you get with it?” Of course there really was no real answer I could give. I couldn’t guarantee how many people I would catch with the new camera. In hindsight it might have been better if we would have changed the nature of the questions. Like turning the idea of a Loss Prevention System from a liability and asking, “How much will it cost and will it really reduce theft?” to asking, “Can Loss Prevention Be Free?” The question implies there will be a tangible payoff. I should have said I could promise a new camera would give a return of investment in less merchandise shrinkage.
The Loss Prevention Calculator is a tool that Loss Prevention Systems Inc. has developed to help managers see in real numbers how much a Checkpoint System can save them in reduced theft. After a few numbers are plugged in a result give the estimated number of months it will take for the system to pay for itself through the reduced amount of shortage it will save. The question, “How much will a retail anti-theft system cost me?” now becomes, “How many months will a new Checkpoint System take to pay for itself” What if we looked at ALL Loss Prevention purchases in this manner? It is certainly a new spin on things.
“Can Loss Prevention be free?” it absolutely can be. Certainly a purchase will have to be made and tagging will have to be done but after that it is a matter of maintenance and an ongoing tagging program. Keep in mind that once a Checkpoint system has paid for itself the continued savings are able to be reinvested or added to the bottom line. No matter how you slice it a system can be free and the Loss Prevention Calculator is the vehicle to show you how.
Get more information on the Free Loss Prevention Calculator, contact us or call 1.770.426.0547 today.
You’ve heard the term “you should invest in your people” but have you ever considered that there can be a
In the Retail Loss Prevention field we are constantly looking at return on investment. We look at equipment costs, the investment of time to do certain tasks and investment in people. We analyze information and I think how convenient it would be to have a Loss Prevention Calculator that could do all the number crunching for us. While we look at the information with the thought, “What will this investment save us in the long term?” rarely do we think in terms of can Loss Prevention Be Free? We just aren’t trained to think like that. We talk about shortage reduction but it is almost unheard of to speak in absolutes in Loss Prevention like talking about shortage elimination. Sometimes the problem is not with what we are discussing it is how we are asking the questions. We have to rethink how we are problem solving. I will give you a perfect example. Bill Bregar, the CEO of Loss Prevention Systems Inc. comes from an extensive background in the Retail Loss Prevention field. He has dealt with the same issues the rest of us have dealt with and many of us have years and years of Loss Prevention experience like Bill does. What Bill has done is rephrased a question we all ask but the answer reveals a better way of thinking about a problem. That problem is the cost of a Loss Prevention System for a store.
Before I go on it is a good time to remember that there are some readers who are not as familiar with what a Loss Prevention System is. A system is an electronic article surveillance package consisting of towers, tags, specialty detachment keys and/or deactivation pads. The system works by deterrence and recovery of merchandise through receipt checks initiated due to alarm activations. Tags are constantly transmitting radio frequency waves and when a crook tries to leave with a tagged item the towers sense that wave and alarms are triggered in the towers. Store associates quickly respond, check the “customer’s” receipt and recover the unpaid goods. Frequently those persons who intend to shoplift have a change of heart when they see the towers at the doors to the store or when they find they cannot get a tag off of an item. The value of the system is clear to store owners when they see the shelves remaining full and the number of count adjustments greatly reduced.
Returning to my original point about how the rephrasing of a question changes the way we evaluate something. When I was a Loss Prevention Manager, if I asked for an additional closed circuit camera I might get a question in response. Like, “How many internals will you get with it?” Of course there really was no real answer I could give. I couldn’t guarantee how many people I would catch with the new camera. In hindsight it might have been better if we would have changed the nature of the questions. Like turning the idea of a Loss Prevention System from a liability and asking, “How much will it cost and will it really reduce theft?” to asking, “Can Loss Prevention Be Free?” The question implies there will be a tangible payoff. I should have said I could promise a new camera would give a return of investment in less merchandise shrinkage.
The Loss Prevention Calculator is a tool that Loss Prevention Systems Inc. has developed to help managers see in real numbers how much an EAS System can save them in reduced theft. After a few numbers are plugged in a result give the estimated number of months it will take for the system to pay for itself through the reduced amount of shortage it will save. The question, “How much will a retail anti-theft system cost me?” now becomes, “How many months will a new EAS System take to pay for itself” What if we looked at ALL Loss Prevention purchases in this manner? It is certainly a new spin on things.
“Can Loss Prevention be free?” it absolutely can be. Certainly a purchase will have to be made and tagging will have to be done but after that it is a matter of maintenance and an ongoing tagging program. Keep in mind that once an EAS system has paid for itself the continued savings are able to be reinvested or added to the bottom line. No matter how you slice it a system can be free and the Loss Prevention Calculator is the vehicle to show you how.
Get more information on the Free Loss Prevention Calculator, contact us or call 1.770.426.0547 today.
I worked in Retail Loss Prevention for many years and during that time I had a lot of opportunities to stop shoplifting as the result of an electronic article surveillance alarm set off by a tagged piece of merchandise. Today I work in a library but still deal with alarms when patrons set them off as they exit or enter our building. The alarms are sometimes caused by items that are tagged but the tags have not been properly deactivated. In other cases it is the result of someone trying to sneak library materials out in order to steal them (sounds a lot like shoplifting doesn’t it?). It is necessary to investigate and resolve the source of any alarm until it is satisfactorily resolved. Just a few days ago a student was leaving the building and as she walked through our towers the alarm sounded. I used my Loss Prevention experience to stop the patron and talk to her about what may have caused the activation.
Whether it is a college library or a store, electronic article surveillance labels can prevent merchandise and property from being improperly removed from a building. In the case of a retail business those labels can make the difference between a profitable and successful enterprise and one that struggles. Sensormatic labels can prevent thieves from stealing but even with a system as good as Sensormatic’s a store must have employees available to respond to alarms. Those employees must also have the proper training to approach shoppers who set off alarms and the know how to resolve the alarms. It is not as easy as it may sound. I would like to offer some tips from my own experience so you can train your employees to identify what has set off an electronic article surveillance alarm system.
• An employee who approaches a customer that has set off an alarm should never begin the interaction assuming the customer was trying to steal something. The attitude exhibited by the employee influences the way the customer will respond. I have found that by making a statement that indicates a mistake happened rather than an attempted theft can calm a patron almost immediately. I will say something like, “Uh-oh, our system must not have deactivated a tag properly, I’m sorry.”
• I then begin the process of determining the cause of the alarm. In a store I will ask if the patron has made a purchase. If they say they did I ask if they could show me a receipt? If the patron said they bought something but they don’t have the receipt I ask if I can look in their bag. I follow up by asking what register they went through and after reviewing the transactions if I cannot locate the item I tell the customer we must have accidentally missed the item as we were scanning. No, I’m not throwing the cashier under the bus, I am giving the person an “out” so it does not appear I am accusing them of theft.
• If a look through a shopping bag does not reveal the cause of the alarm a bit if finesse will be required. You may have to try to get a peak in a purse, backpack or tote and that can be more difficult. People don’t like to have their personal belongings rummaged through. I like to say something that will make the person feel like I am helping them. If they have multiple bags I will suggest they walk one bag through the tower at a time. Through the process of elimination I find the bag that has the active tag in it. I then diffuse the situation further. I mention that I have had customers forget and put an item in a purse to see if it would fit (such as a wallet) and forget they put it in. Again, providing a ready-made excuse for the customer makes it easier to get an item back or the person to pay for it, I have encountered both. I also tell customers that sometimes people make purchases at other stores with electronic article surveillance systems and they fail to deactivate tags and it can set off our system.
A skilled employee who has been trained can stop shoplifting and even prevent unintentional missed merchandise from leaving the store.
If you don’t currently have a Sensormatic system in your store I strongly encourage you to get one. You will stop shoplifting and as you do you will see your instocks improve. THAT drives sales and profits. As evidence that my tips work, in the case of the library alarm, the student had two books in her backpack that she had forgotten about. I got them checked out and the student went on her way.
Need more information on electronic article surveillance, contact us or call 1.770.426.0547 today.
