Last Sunday my girlfriend and I decided to take a drive to the flea market right outside of town. She wanted to go see if she could find any antiques, while I was pretty certain I’d come across some stolen goods. Flea markets and swap shops are an easy fence for stolen property, and my visit last week only proved that. I came across a “vendor” selling baby formula, which still had my store’s Checkpoint Labels attached to the cans. Jokingly, I asked the seller if he had his own Checkpoint System. Apparently, not knowing what I meant, he laughed, shrugged his shoulders and tried to sell me the formula.
Baby formula is a hot target for organized retail crime (ORC) groups. In most stores, these cans of formula are not protected by the store’s Checkpoint System, so they make an easy target for thieves. I’ve seen cases where one booster has can wipe out an entire store’s selection in a matter of seconds. This is a problem, and not just for the retailer experiencing the loss. Baby formula can be tracked over the border, and some recent ORC busts have revealed large warehouses in the US and Mexico where these gangs were storing millions of dollars’ worth of just baby formula, before being able to liquidate their stolen goods. In these instances, these warehouses were clearly not up to any type of standards.
Think about how sensitive a newborn baby’s immune system is. Now you have these criminals stealing baby formula, transporting them in hot cars, and storing them in climate controlled warehouses in the middle of the summer. There’s a good chance that the formula can go bad, or spoil. An unknowing mother who only sees a cheap alternative to the store’s price buys this, feeds her child and the baby gets sick, or possibly worse. A Checkpoint Label should be your first line of defense to prevent this from ever happening.
If you have a Checkpoint System set up in your store, I can guarantee that there will be a Checkpoint Label out there that can solve baby formula theft issues in your store. Whether you want a clear label, round label or one with a barcode, the possibilities are almost limitless for your store. What I personally have done to battle ORC groups is to have my store’s name and number printed on the Checkpoint Label. This has gone a long way to discourage boosters from targeting those particular products, since they can link directly back to where the theft was committed. In stores where we have deployed this tactic, baby formula theft dried up. The boosters are not willing to take the chance, especially as more and more states are taking a much harder stance against shoplifting.
For more information, contact us at Antishoplifting.net, or call 1.770.426.0547
