See You Next Time – Retail Theft Prevention

While working in retail loss prevention, you see a side of society that not many people have the pleasure to experience.  You come across what seems to be an infinite amount of unsavory characters that come into the stores, and the stories that come out of these encounters are sometimes unbelievable to those not experiencing them first hand.  No matter the size of your business, if it doesn’t at least have a basic retail theft prevention plan in place to stop shoplifting from happening, you are just making it easier for the thieves, and making your store a favorite destination for your not so friendly neighborhood shoplifters.
I remember hearing stories about one shoplifter in particular that would just not give up stealing, no matter how many times he was caught.  This guy had a serious problem, which was a drug addiction that caused him to steal large amounts of high dollar products to support his habit.  His method of operation was usually to load up a shopping cart full of electronic gadgets and just push the cart out the door.  Other times, he would actually cut a hole in the lawn and garden department’s fence before coming into the store, and bring the merchandise out there to push it right through the fence.  He would then climb through the fence himself and get into a car that was already waiting for him to make his getaway.
This shoplifter had been apprehended several times for committing the same types of thefts.  If that wasn’t enough, each time he was stopped for shoplifting he would struggle with the employees and then warn them that he would be back by saying, “see you next time”.  Even more bizarre, is the fact that he wasn’t lying.  He would actually go back to some of the exact same stores where he had been previously apprehended for theft, and steal again with the same method of operation.  You would think that he would go somewhere else after getting caught a couple of times and going to jail, but no, he just couldn’t get it together and stop shoplifting.
The only thing that was slowing this guy down was the fact that he had to defeat the anti-shoplifting devices that were attached to the merchandise, because he didn’t want the alarm sounding at the door when he pushed out the stolen goods.  If it wasn’t for that, he would have been in and out of the store much faster.  Most of the merchandise he was after had devices like Checkpoint security tags attached to them, which meant he would have to stop and remove all of the tags before he exited the store if he didn’t want to attract any extra attention.  Some of the times he was caught, it was because the staff saw him pulling the tags off of the items that were in his shopping cart.
Do yourself a favor and have a good retail theft prevention strategy that works for your business, because if you don’t, you are basically advertising that your store is an easy target for shoplifters. Having a strong plan in place is the only way you will have even the slightest chance to stop shoplifting from happing in your store, or at least reduce the chances.  The shoplifters aren’t going to make it easy to protect your merchandise, so you should do everything you can to make it as tough as possible for the ones that are stealing from your store.  

While working in retail loss prevention, you see a side of society that not many people have the pleasure to experience.  You come across what seems to be an infinite amount of unsavory characters that come into the stores, and the stories that come out of these encounters are sometimes unbelievable to those not experiencing them first hand.  No matter the size of your business, if it doesn’t at least have a basic retail theft prevention plan in place to stop shoplifting from happening, you are just making it easier for the thieves, and making your store a favorite destination for your not so friendly neighborhood shoplifters.

I remember hearing stories about one shoplifter in particular that would just not give up stealing, no matter how many times he was caught.  This guy had a serious problem, which was a drug addiction that caused him to steal large amounts of high dollar products to support his habit.  His method of operation was usually to load up a shopping cart full of electronic gadgets and just push the cart out the door.  Other times, he would actually cut a hole in the lawn and garden department’s fence before coming into the store, and bring the merchandise out there to push it right through the fence.  He would then climb through the fence himself and get into a car that was already waiting for him to make his getaway.

This shoplifter had been apprehended several times for committing the same types of thefts.  If that wasn’t enough, each time he was stopped for shoplifting he would struggle with the employees and then warn them that he would be back by saying, “see you next time”.  Even more bizarre, is the fact that he wasn’t lying.  He would actually go back to some of the exact same stores where he had been previously apprehended for theft, and steal again with the same method of operation.  You would think that he would go somewhere else after getting caught a couple of times and going to jail, but no, he just couldn’t get it together and stop shoplifting.

The only thing that was slowing this guy down was the fact that he had to defeat the anti-shoplifting devices that were attached to the merchandise, because he didn’t want the alarm sounding at the door when he pushed out the stolen goods.  If it wasn’t for that, he would have been in and out of the store much faster.  Most of the merchandise he was after had devices like Checkpoint Security tags attached to them, which meant he would have to stop and remove all of the tags before he exited the store if he didn’t want to attract any extra attention.  Some of the times he was caught, it was because the staff saw him pulling the tags off of the items that were in his shopping cart.

Do yourself a favor and have a good retail theft prevention strategy that works for your business, because if you don’t, you are basically advertising that your store is an easy target for shoplifters. Having a strong plan in place is the only way you will have even the slightest chance to stop shoplifting from happening in your store, or at least reduce the chances.  The shoplifters aren’t going to make it easy to protect your merchandise, so you should do everything you can to make it as tough as possible for the ones that are stealing from your store.  

For more information contact us: Anti Shoplifting or call 1.770.426.0547