Living in a beach/tourist community, there are a lot of activities for locals and tourists alike to engage in. One of the favorite past times is fishing. Living so close to the ocean, as well as lakes and inland waterways, there is plenty of access to fresh water and saltwater fishing. It also means that there is a significant demand for fishing rods and reels for fishermen/women of different skill levels. Big box retailers, sporting goods stores, hunting and fishing stores all sell fishing gear and bait, it’s a big market in this part of the country. Needless to say, since it is so popular there is also a certain dishonest element that shoplifts fishing gear. I worked as a Loss Prevention Manager for a large retailer for many years in this community and dealt with a number of shoplifting cases in which fishing rods and reels were the focus of theft. It was not always easy to prevent shoplifting and deter theft of these items. If we had Alpha’s O Tag to use, we could have deterred much of the theft and fraud we experienced in this department.
The O Tag is a retail anti-theft device that is a one-piece design and is unique from other types of devices. The O Tag has a circular design that allows it to clamp around a tubular object, such as a baseball bat, display merchandise power cords and as we are discussing in this article, fishing rods. The tags are designed to work with electronic article surveillance (EAS) antennas and will set off the alarm in the antennas if they are brought into the radio frequency field of the antennas. The tags require a detachment key in order to remove them so it is extremely risky for a shoplifter to try to force one off of a piece of merchandise. Enough force and a fishing rod will break, rendering the merchandise useless. The EAS antennas and the tags combine to effectively deter thieves, but in cases where they aren’t deterred, the alarm allows store employees to respond and try to recover goods or identify the culprit.
I did see some theft of fishing rods and those were usually in video reviews attempting to determine where merchandise went. Many times the shoplifters were rolling merchandise out the front doors in shopping carts or carrying them away. The only retail anti-theft devices we had to use were EAS soft tags attached to the manufacturers’ hang tag. Unfortunately, some of the shoplifters would just pull the hang tag off and the EAS tag with it. This of course meant no EAS alarm to alert staff that someone might be attempting a theft. Using an O Tag on the merchandise would have prevented the shoplifters from being able to remove the retail anti-theft device from the rods and more than likely sent them to another store.
If the owner of a small fishing store and bait shop were to decide to use the tags, they would not be restricted to using the devices on fishing poles to prevent shoplifting, they could also be placed on such things as tackle box handles and drink cooler handles. If a store sells fishing boat accessories such as gallon containers of marine oil in bottles with handles on them, this retail anti-theft device can be placed around the handle to prevent shoplifting. Other fishing accessories that may be protected with the tags include, ice fishing shovels, chisels, bows for bow fishing and fishing net handles.
If you own a fishing supply store why cast around looking for a new angle to prevent shoplifting? You’ll be hooked once you use the O Tag and see how effective it is in keeping merchandise in stock and theft down. You’ll be able to keep prices low and hook new customers.
O Tags are important and we can help you with them. Call 1.770.426.0547 and let’s talk.
