If you’re married, or have a significant other, I don’t have to tell you that purses are a big deal. Not only are they functional, but they make a statement. They can also hurt bank statements as well… I was recently in a high end apparel retailer, and saw a display of purses that were literally bolted and cable locked down. Curious, I strolled on over to look at what one of these would set my wife back. A couple of mortgage payments, if you’re interested? Looking at their display, it was clear they were attempting to prevent shoplifting with the stringent security measures. There had to be a better way, but hey, it wasn’t my store, so I continued on my day without much more thought.
A few months later, I got an invitation to sit in on some meetings at work. They were announcing that we were going to start carrying a wider assortment of higher end apparel accessories. Top of the list? Purses. Our buyers wanted some input from the loss prevention department on product security. To my amazement, they had few pictures of competitors set up and it was similar to what I had seen a few weeks back. We didn’t want that. We wanted a clean presentation that was inviting to our customers. After all, we want them to spend their money with us and not feel like a criminal! They asked me to look into some retail anti-theft devices that would fit our vision all while still ensuing that we protected our inventory.
I already had a great idea in mind. I had used mini cable locks in the past on different merchandise, and really saw the potential in using them on the purses. Since it was an alpha 3 alarm, we would get the benefits of triple protection. It would alert the EAS towers if it went though, alert if it was tampered with while on the product, and provide a constant, audible alarm for about 10 minutes after passing through the towers. This was our solution. Once all the details were hammered out, we rolled them out to the stores. It wasn’t long before we began seeing our known shoplifters attempt to steal these purses.
Every week, I’d see reports from the store LP managers on attempted thefts, but surprisingly, no one was able to actually steal them. The stores were seeing boosters clip the cables, but then run off when the cables were triggered. Additionally, there were several occasions where shoplifters would take the merchandise out the front doors, only to be surprised at the 3 alarms cheerful ring! Most cases, they would ditch the product and head for the hills! Granted, we had a few slip through, but overall, the cable locks were doing their jobs. We wanted them to prevent shoplifting, and that’s exactly what they did.
If you’re married, or have a significant other, I don’t have to tell you that purses are a big deal. Not only are they functional, but they make a statement. They can also hurt bank statements as well… I was recently in a high end apparel retailer, and saw a display of purses that were literally bolted and cable locked down. Curious, I strolled on over to look at what one of these would set my wife back. A couple of mortgage payments, if you’re interested? Looking at their display, it was clear they were attempting to prevent shoplifting with the stringent security measures. There had to be a better way, but hey, it wasn’t my store, so I continued on my day without much more thought.
A few months later, I got an invitation to sit in on some meetings at work. They were announcing that we were going to start carrying a wider assortment of higher end apparel accessories. Top of the list? Purses. Our buyers wanted some input from the loss prevention department on product security. To my amazement, they had few pictures of competitors set up and it was similar to what I had seen a few weeks back. We didn’t want that. We wanted a clean presentation that was inviting to our customers. After all, we want them to spend their money with us and not feel like a criminal! They asked me to look into some retail anti-theft devices that would fit our vision all while still ensuing that we protected our inventory.
I already had a great idea in mind. I had used Mini Cable Loks in the past on different merchandise, and really saw the potential in using them on the purses. Since it is an Alpha 3 Alarm, we would get the benefits of triple protection. It would alert the EAS towers if it went though, alert if it was tampered with while on the product, and provide a constant, audible alarm for about 10 minutes after passing through the towers. This was our solution. Once all the details were hammered out, we rolled them out to the stores. It wasn’t long before we began seeing our known shoplifters attempt to steal these purses.
Every week, I’d see reports from the store LP managers on attempted thefts, but surprisingly, no one was able to actually steal them. The stores were seeing boosters clip the cables, but then run off when the cables were triggered. Additionally, there were several occasions where shoplifters would take the merchandise out the front doors, only to be surprised at the Alpha 3 Alarms cheerful ring! Most cases, they would ditch the product and head for the hills! Granted, we had a few slip through, but overall, the Mini Cable Loks were doing their jobs. We wanted them to prevent shoplifting, and that’s exactly what they did.
For more information contact us at losspreventionsystems.com or call 1.770.426.2537
A store I previously worked for had a good clothing security program in place, but there was still a great deal of loss in all of the clothing departments. There was usually an employee attending the changing rooms and ensuring that customers came out with the same amount of items they brought into the room. We also used hard Checkpoint tags on the more expensive items, and items that were considered to be in a higher theft category.
Even with this clothing security strategy in place, we were still finding several clothing price tags in the changing and fitting rooms on a regular basis. Something wasn’t adding up to me, so I decided to have the fitting room attendants check all of the rooms each hour, and log what they found along with the time and what room it was found. The findings were surprising, because they didn’t seem to be consistent with a shoplifter. When I examined the logs they completed, I found that there were consistently clothing tags being found in the rooms when the first log was completed in the morning. In addition, I checked the previous night’s logs, and found that the rooms were found to be clear at the end of the night, so that could only mean that the thefts were occurring after the last log was completed or before the first log was completed.
This meant that the thefts were being committed by someone that was working at the store, so I then opened an employee theft investigation. I had no idea who could have been stealing the clothes at the time, so I decided to go back to the basics and sit and watch the area to see who was going in and out. If you’re having reoccurring theft issues in your store and can’t figure out what, or who is causing the problem, you may want to conduct a random surveillance of different areas in your store. This is a good way to find out what’s really going on in your store, and all you have to do is to sit back and observe…well you also might want to take notes. It’s best to do this by using remote surveillance, or hiding out in an office that has access to the cameras in the store. As long as no one sees you or knows that you are in the building, you should be fine.
In this case though, I had a general idea that an employee was stealing in the fitting room, I just didn’t know who it was or the method of operation they were using, so the surveillance wasn’t random, but rather focused. It was kind of like looking for a shoplifter, but instead of watching customers, I was watching the employees in the store. Sure enough, during my second surveillance of the area, I was watching an early morning stock employee browsing through the clothing. They seemed to be avoiding clothing that had Checkpoint tags attached to them, but were still selecting quite a few items at once. After that they went into the fitting rooms as expected with an armful of clothing, and when they came out, the selected clothes were nowhere in sight. Later the room was searched and of course we found tags on the floor. We eventually interviewed the employee and found that they were putting on the stolen clothes under their own.
For more information contact us: (Clothing Security) or call 1.770.426.0547
A store I previously worked for had a good clothing security program in place, but there was still a great deal of loss in all of the clothing departments. There was usually an employee attending the changing rooms and ensuring that customers came out with the same amount of items they brought into the room. We also used hard Checkpoint Tags on the more expensive items, and items that were considered to be in a higher theft category.
Even with this clothing security strategy in place, we were still finding several clothing price tags in the changing and fitting rooms on a regular basis. Something wasn’t adding up to me, so I decided to have the fitting room attendants check all of the rooms each hour, and log what they found along with the time and what room it was found. The findings were surprising, because they didn’t seem to be consistent with a shoplifter. When I examined the logs they completed, I found that there were consistently clothing tags being found in the rooms when the first log was completed in the morning. In addition, I checked the previous night’s logs, and found that the rooms were found to be clear at the end of the night, so that could only mean that the thefts were occurring after the last log was completed or before the first log was completed.
This meant that the thefts were being committed by someone that was working at the store, so I then opened an employee theft investigation. I had no idea who could have been stealing the clothes at the time, so I decided to go back to the basics and sit and watch the area to see who was going in and out. If you’re having recurring theft issues in your store and can’t figure out what, or who is causing the problem, you may want to conduct a random surveillance of different areas in your store. This is a good way to find out what’s really going on in your store, and all you have to do is to sit back and observe…well you also might want to take notes. It’s best to do this by using remote surveillance, or hiding out in an office that has access to the cameras in the store. As long as no one sees you or knows that you are in the building, you should be fine.
In this case though, I had a general idea that an employee was stealing in the fitting room, I just didn’t know who it was or the method of operation they were using, so the surveillance wasn’t random, but rather focused. It was kind of like looking for a shoplifter, but instead of watching customers, I was watching the employees in the store. Sure enough, during my second surveillance of the area, I was watching an early morning stock employee browsing through the clothing. They seemed to be avoiding clothing that had Checkpoint Tags attached to them, but were still selecting quite a few items at once. After that they went into the fitting rooms as expected with an armful of clothing, and when they came out, the selected clothes were nowhere in sight. Later the room was searched and of course we found tags on the floor. We eventually interviewed the employee and found that they were putting on the stolen clothes under their own.
For more information contact us: Clothing Security or call 1.770.426.0547
In the small retail pharmacy business, the front end sales do not come close to the pharmacy contribution. Our company has to draw customers to choose our pharmacy to dispense their prescriptions, but the front end has to have the right product mix as well. We carry OTC medications and health/beauty aids, and other miscellaneous merchandise, but every other retailer has all of that too. One category we have added in the past few years is beer and wine. One new product protection tool we have found a need to incorporate is the Bottle Lock.
We have not needed to add them in all of our stores, but there has been a clear need in a few locations. Some of our stores are in areas that deal with high crime and poverty, with a lot of foot traffic, so there was a sudden spike in run-out thefts once we added alcohol. That was mainly in the wine section. Bottle Locks became a saving grace in that section to put a stop to those rampant thefts.
We only carry beer in reach in coolers, and the section is generally still only two or four doors. We are certainly not a big competitor in the local beer business; the point is to have it for convenience and impulse. The powers that be have decided to change our selection of products in these coolers. In the past we have carried only packaged items, in six, twelve and eighteen count bottles or cans. Now we are in the single serve business, carrying the giant cans and those big forty ounce bottles. I am usually pretty “yippy skippy” about new items, but this makes me ill at ease. I just feel like the draw of a huge cold beer can turn into the difference in whether a store has to deal with beer and wine theft.
My husband used to work in a convenience store and those bottles were like his arch enemies. They were stolen by local troublesome customers that had substance abuse issues. They were also very regularly stolen by teenagers. Group of teens tended see these bottles as “sharing size” and they would come in and steal them several times a week. Some would attempt to distract the clerk, and others would simply conceal them and walk right out the door.
Bottle Locks will secure the bottles shut until they are removed by the clerk. They will alarm if a customer attempts to remove them, and if there is a successful theft, I know they won’t get to partake in that bottle. The glass neck would most likely break, rendering the bottle dangerous and the beer inside undrinkable.
We will be looking into adding Bottle Locks to these as soon as they are stocked by the vendors. I want to have products on my shelves that are appealing to my customer base. There is nothing wrong with purchasing a cold single serve beer to take home and enjoy after a long hot day of work. But I want those to be bought by my honest cash paying customers, and not easily pilfered by those that would not pay for them.
For more information contact us: 1.770.426.0547 or Bottlelock.net
In the small retail pharmacy business, the front end sales do not come close to the pharmacy contribution. Our company has to draw customers to choose our pharmacy to dispense their prescriptions, but the front end has to have the right product mix as well. We carry OTC medications and health/beauty aids, and other miscellaneous merchandise, but every other retailer has all of that too. One category we have added in the past few years is beer and wine. One new product protection tool we have found a need to incorporate is the Bottle Lock.
We have not needed to add them in all of our stores, but there has been a clear need in a few locations. Some of our stores are in areas that deal with high crime and poverty, with a lot of foot traffic, so there was a sudden spike in run-out thefts once we added alcohol. That was mainly in the wine section. Bottle Locks became a saving grace in that section to put a stop to those rampant thefts.
We only carry beer in reach in coolers, and the section is generally still only two or four doors. We are certainly not a big competitor in the local beer business; the point is to have it for convenience and impulse. The powers that be have decided to change our selection of products in these coolers. In the past we have carried only packaged items, in six, twelve and eighteen count bottles or cans. Now we are in the single serve business, carrying the giant cans and those big forty ounce bottles. I am usually pretty “yippy skippy” about new items, but this makes me ill at ease. I just feel like the draw of a huge cold beer can turn into the difference in whether a store has to deal with beer and wine theft.
My husband used to work in a convenience store and those bottles were like his arch enemies. They were stolen by local troublesome customers that had substance abuse issues. They were also very regularly stolen by teenagers. A group of teens tended see these bottles as “sharing size” and they would come in and steal them several times a week. Some would attempt to distract the clerk, and others would simply conceal them and walk right out the door.
Bottle Locks will secure the bottles shut until they are removed by the clerk. They will alarm if a customer attempts to remove them, and if there is a successful theft, I know they won’t get to partake in that bottle. The glass neck would most likely break, rendering the bottle dangerous and the beer inside undrinkable.
We will be looking into adding Bottle Locks to these as soon as they are stocked by the vendors. I want to have products on my shelves that are appealing to my customer base. There is nothing wrong with purchasing a cold single serve beer to take home and enjoy after a long hot day of work. But I want those to be bought by my honest cash paying customers, and not easily pilfered by those that would not pay for them.
For more information contact us at Bottle Lok or call 1.770.426.0547
For those of us who work in retail and loss prevention, we unfortunately have to deal with shoplifters in our stores on a regular basis. When you stop shoplifting suspects, sometimes it’s easy to let your nerves and adrenaline get the best of you in these situations. You don’t want to let the shoplifter know that you are nervous, so the best thing to do is be calm and keep your mind on what you are trying to accomplish. You also want to be able to make sure they don’t become agitated, so it’s important to keep the line of communication open throughout the process and give the shoplifters straight forward direction.
I remember a time that I was standing in one of the music CD aisles, watching someone at a distance in the electronics department. The next thing I know, a guy walks right next to me and picked up several of the exact same CD and placed it into a shopping cart. This was earlier in my career, so needless to say, my adrenaline was through the roof at that point. Many things were going through my head at the moment and I was thinking how lucky I was to have seen that happen right in front of me. I also knew that I now had to be extra careful because the shoplifter has now seen me, so I can’t let him see me again or he will become suspicious. The CDs at the time had large plastic anti-shoplifting devices on them, and I also noticed that he had a backpack in his shopping cart.
I stayed calm, took a breath and walked away to watch him from a distance. He continued picking up CDs and placed them into the shopping cart. Then he went into a different department where he started looking around and popped the anti-shoplifting cases off the CDs with a screwdriver. Naturally, his next move was to put the CDs into his backpack. After concealing them into the backpack, he headed out to the garden area and exited the store with the stolen merchandise. When I approached him and identified myself, he recognized me from being there when he first picked up the merchandise, which he actually laughed about when we got back to the office.
During apprehensions when you stop shoplifting suspects, you have to remain cool and collected. Another time composure and communication helped me was when I caught a guy pushing out a cart full of beer. The cart of beer wasn’t the surprising part, it was what happened during the actual apprehension of the subject. I watched the guy load up a cart with cases of beer and starting pushing it toward the front of the store. Once he got near the registers, he took off running with the cart out the exit door. I was not expecting this, and wasn’t close enough to him when he exited to stop him. I knew it was against policy to chase him through the parking lot, so I decided to stay on the sidewalk and call out to him. By this time, he was almost to his getaway vehicle, so I could not believe my eyes when he turned around with the cart and came back to talk to me. I couldn’t believe that it actually worked, but it did, and I got all of the beer back to the shelves where it belonged.
For more information contact us: (stop shoplifting) or call 1.770.426.0547
For those of us who work in retail and loss prevention, we unfortunately have to deal with shoplifters in our stores on a regular basis. When you stop shoplifting suspects, sometimes it’s easy to let your nerves and adrenaline get the best of you in these situations. You don’t want to let the shoplifter know that you are nervous, so the best thing to do is be calm and keep your mind on what you are trying to accomplish. You also want to be able to make sure they don’t become agitated, so it’s important to keep the line of communication open throughout the process and give the shoplifters straight forward direction.
I remember a time that I was standing in one of the music CD aisles, watching someone at a distance in the electronics department. The next thing I know, a guy walks right next to me and picked up several of the exact same CD and placed it into a shopping cart. This was earlier in my career, so needless to say, my adrenaline was through the roof at that point. Many things were going through my head at the moment and I was thinking how lucky I was to have seen that happen right in front of me. I also knew that I now had to be extra careful because the shoplifter has now seen me, so I can’t let him see me again or he will become suspicious. The CDs at the time had large plastic anti-shoplifting devices on them, and I also noticed that he had a backpack in his shopping cart.
I stayed calm, took a breath and walked away to watch him from a distance. He continued picking up CDs and placed them into the shopping cart. Then he went into a different department where he started looking around and popped the anti-shoplifting cases off the CDs with a screwdriver. Naturally, his next move was to put the CDs into his backpack. After concealing them into the backpack, he headed out to the garden area and exited the store with the stolen merchandise. When I approached him and identified myself, he recognized me from being there when he first picked up the merchandise, which he actually laughed about when we got back to the office.
During apprehensions when you stop shoplifting suspects, you have to remain cool and collected. Another time composure and communication helped me was when I caught a guy pushing out a cart full of beer. The cart of beer wasn’t the surprising part, it was what happened during the actual apprehension of the subject. I watched the guy load up a cart with cases of beer and starting pushing it toward the front of the store. Once he got near the registers, he took off running with the cart out the exit door. I was not expecting this, and wasn’t close enough to him when he exited to stop him. I knew it was against policy to chase him through the parking lot, so I decided to stay on the sidewalk and call out to him. By this time, he was almost to his getaway vehicle, so I could not believe my eyes when he turned around with the cart and came back to talk to me. I couldn’t believe that it actually worked, but it did, and I got all of the beer back to the shelves where it belonged.
For more information contact us: Stop Shoplifting or call 1.770.426.0547
It was one of those hot, miserable New Orleans days. Middle of August and the humidity was probably around 300%. One of those times I enjoyed working inside along with the central air. I was working a joint investigation with local police and a few retailers. This task force was assembled with one goal in mind, prevent shoplifting in our parish. With the help of some area stores and a strong partnership with the police, we had set up shop at a local pharmacy since they were constantly targeted for household items, such as detergent and soap. We were in place and we just waited. 3 hours in and sweat dripping down our faces, a familiar face walked through the front doors. We knew this guy. He was a booster with a criminal record a mile long. Sure enough, he walked right over to the laundry detergent.
Believe it or not, laundry detergent is one of the highest theft items right now. Boosters can easily walk out the doors with this product and turn it incredibly quick at flea markets, or less than honest brick and mortar stores. In this store, their LP team had secured most of their detergent with an alpha 3 alarm hard tag. For most, it’s a great physical deterrent. It will trigger the EAS upon exit, alarm if the cable is cut, and my favorite part, alarm for about 10 minutes after going through the towers. Getting back to our booster… he walks over with a buggy, loads 5 up and simply walks out. The EAS tower alarms and the 3 alarm tags start wailing. Doesn’t faze this guy one bit. He casually walks over to his vehicle, loads them in the trunk and drives off. The purpose of our operation was to find out where the product was going, so we let him leave and we, along with police, followed behind.
About two blocks down the road, he pulls into a neighborhood grocery store. Cameras were rolling as he very casually unloaded the detergent and brought it inside. After a few minutes, our friend emerged and detectives affected an arrest. He immediately denied any wrong doing, not knowing we have watched, filmed and followed his every move. We went inside the store to receive our stolen goods, but the shop owner claimed to have no idea what we were talking about. The detective asked a few of us to come inside to see if we could identify any of our store’s product that may be on display. After a few laps around the small store, I didn’t see anything that could belong to me, so I began walking towards the front when a faint, chirping sound caught my attention. I called the detectives over, to what appeared to be a supply closet. I knew this sound. It was the alpha 3 alarm tag still chirping from when it had been trigged at the EAS tower.
Long story short, the owner, trying to weasel out of trouble agreed to open the door and cooperate. Inside was roughly 3 dozen bottles of detergent, most still with the retail anti-theft device still attached. And there, in the corner, still chirping away were the 5 that our booster had stolen from us. You couldn’t ask for better evidence than that!.
It was one of those hot, miserable New Orleans days. Middle of August and the humidity was probably around 300%. One of those times I enjoyed working inside along with the central air. I was working a joint investigation with local police and a few retailers. This task force was assembled with one goal in mind, prevent shoplifting in our parish. With the help of some area stores and a strong partnership with the police, we had set up shop at a local pharmacy since they were constantly targeted for household items, such as detergent and soap. We were in place and we just waited. 3 hours in and sweat dripping down our faces, a familiar face walked through the front doors. We knew this guy. He was a booster with a criminal record a mile long. Sure enough, he walked right over to the laundry detergent.
Believe it or not, laundry detergent is one of the highest theft items right now. Boosters can easily walk out the doors with this product and turn it incredibly quick at flea markets, or less than honest brick and mortar stores. In this store, their LP team had secured most of their detergent with an Alpha 3 Alarm Hard Tag. For most, it’s a great physical deterrent. It will trigger the EAS upon exit, alarm if the cable is cut, and my favorite part, alarm for about 10 minutes after going through the towers. Getting back to our booster… he walks over with a buggy, loads 5 up and simply walks out. The EAS Tower Alarms and the Alpha 3 Alarm Tags start wailing. Doesn’t faze this guy one bit. He casually walks over to his vehicle, loads them in the trunk and drives off. The purpose of our operation was to find out where the product was going, so we let him leave and we, along with police, followed behind.
About two blocks down the road, he pulls into a neighborhood grocery store. Cameras were rolling as he very casually unloaded the detergent and brought it inside. After a few minutes, our friend emerged and detectives affected an arrest. He immediately denied any wrong doing, not knowing we have watched, filmed and followed his every move. We went inside the store to receive our stolen goods, but the shop owner claimed to have no idea what we were talking about. The detective asked a few of us to come inside to see if we could identify any of our store’s product that may be on display. After a few laps around the small store, I didn’t see anything that could belong to me, so I began walking towards the front when a faint, chirping sound caught my attention. I called the detectives over, to what appeared to be a supply closet. I knew this sound. It was the Alpha 3 Alarm Tag still chirping from when it had been triggered at the EAS tower.
Long story short, the owner, trying to weasel out of trouble agreed to open the door and cooperate. Inside was roughly 3 dozen bottles of detergent, most still with the retail anti-theft device still attached. And there, in the corner, still chirping away were the 5 that our booster had stolen from us. You couldn’t ask for better evidence than that!
For more information contact us at losspreventionsystems.com or call 1.770.426.0547
For every apparel retailer there comes a steady stream of people who just don’t want to purchase your product. From my experience, it seems like more shoplifters target apparel merchandise than any other section of the store. Maybe because there are a plethora of high dollar, easily concealable items, or that you can get more articles of clothing in a bag, or maybe it’s because most stores are not utilizing security tags on clothes. Whatever the case, apparel theft is huge, and if your store has a fitting room, this could be a part of the problem.
I was training some new in store LP agents recently, when we began to observe a female in our apparel department. We watched as she began selecting random articles of high end clothing, without regard for size. One thing we noticed is that she was particularly attentive to whether or not clothing security devices were used on the pieces she was selecting. Exhibiting all the classic signs of a shoplifter, we began observation. It wasn’t long before she took a pile of clothes into the fitting room. About 25 minutes later, she emerged with what seemed like a smaller pile of clothes. I couldn’t be 100% certain if a theft had taken place, so I just had to watch as she left the store with, what I’m assuming, was a few hundred dollars’ worth of my merchandise. What happened?
The company I work for doesn’t have a fitting room policy. Meaning, there is no employee working this area, and customer can come and go if they choose. This is great for customer service, but it also leaves the store open for theft in a big way. Since there is no control of merchandise going in to the room, it’s almost impossible to make a shoplifting apprehension from the fitting room. Without an accurate number of what went in the stall, there’s no way to tell if the same amount of merchandise had come out. We would routinely find defeated checkpoint tags in the stalls at night. We needed a solution.
After several lengthy meetings with our operations group, we decided to test a fitting room policy at a few of our higher shrink stores. The area was staffed with an employee during business hours and now we would limit the amount of items a customer could take into room. In addition, the employee would give the customer a number that matched the number of garments and the clothing would be verified by that employee upon the customer’s exit. The return on investment was almost immediate. The first thing we noticed was a reduction in the number of checkpoint tags we would find in the stalls. We also saw a reduction in shrink in the apparel department overall. The biggest challenge we thought we’d face was opposition from our customers, however, what we learned is that most every big box retailer has a similar process. I think no matter the size of your store, if you have a fitting room, you need to implement a control. If not, you will continually open yourself for unnecessary losses caused by shoplifting.
For more information, contact us: Clothing Security, or call 1.770.426.0547
For every apparel retailer there comes a steady stream of people who just don’t want to purchase your product. From my experience, it seems like more shoplifters target apparel merchandise than any other section of the store. Maybe because there are a plethora of high dollar, easily concealable items, or that you can get more articles of clothing in a bag, or maybe it’s because most stores are not utilizing security tags on clothes. Whatever the case, apparel theft is huge, and if your store has a fitting room, this could be a part of the problem.
I was training some new in store LP agents recently, when we began to observe a female in our apparel department. We watched as she began selecting random articles of high end clothing, without regard for size. One thing we noticed is that she was particularly attentive to whether or not clothing security devices were used on the pieces she was selecting. Exhibiting all the classic signs of a shoplifter, we began observation. It wasn’t long before she took a pile of clothes into the fitting room. About 25 minutes later, she emerged with what seemed like a smaller pile of clothes. I couldn’t be 100% certain if a theft had taken place, so I just had to watch as she left the store with, what I’m assuming, was a few hundred dollars’ worth of my merchandise. What happened?
The company I work for doesn’t have a fitting room policy. Meaning, there is no employee working this area, and customer can come and go if they choose. This is great for customer service, but it also leaves the store open for theft in a big way. Since there is no control of merchandise going in to the room, it’s almost impossible to make a shoplifting apprehension from the fitting room. Without an accurate number of what went in the stall, there’s no way to tell if the same amount of merchandise had come out. We would routinely find defeated Checkpoint Tags in the stalls at night. We needed a solution.
After several lengthy meetings with our operations group, we decided to test a fitting room policy at a few of our higher shrink stores. The area was staffed with an employee during business hours and now we would limit the amount of items a customer could take into room. In addition, the employee would give the customer a number that matched the number of garments and the clothing would be verified by that employee upon the customer’s exit. The return on investment was almost immediate. The first thing we noticed was a reduction in the number of Checkpoint Tags we would find in the stalls. We also saw a reduction in shrink in the apparel department overall. The biggest challenge we thought we’d face was opposition from our customers, however, what we learned is that most every big box retailer has a similar process. I think no matter the size of your store, if you have a fitting room, you need to implement a control. If not, you will continually open yourself for unnecessary losses caused by shoplifting.
For more information, contact us: Clothing Security, or call 1.770.426.0547
