Fighting a battle against clothing thieves can be difficult, merchandise may be hidden in purses or bags or it may go into a fitting room and worn out of the store. How many times do you find stray price tags, hang tags, etc. lying on the floor of your fitting room. Add to the effort to prevent shoplifting, the fight against return fraud and a clothing retailer can feel like they are fighting a lost cause. Now, what if you could fight both battles with ONE solution? The Alpha ink tag could be the weapon you need in your arsenal to fight theft AND fraud.
The Alpha ink tag is designed for items such as denims, jackets and sportswear, but you may find they can be used for a wide variety of clothing lines. The tags are alarmed so attempts to leave the store with the merchandise will activate EAS antennas. The built in ink capsules ensure that if someone attempts to force the tag off the ink will spill onto the merchandise and ruin it, making it useless for return fraud.
In the first department store I worked at we had a major problem with ball cap theft and we needed to take steps to prevent shoplifting in that department. Baseball hats were a prestige item and one issue we encountered with traditional EAS soft tagging on the hang tags was that teenagers were leaving tags on even if the hats were purchased. We could not risk stopping someone leaving the store with a hat on just because tags were hanging off. If the EAS alarm sounded, that seemed to make the wearer even happier. When we implemented an ink tag program we saw an immediate reduction in the theft of ball caps which ran around $20 each at the time. The ink tags were apparently NOT cool to have on a hat and much of the theft stopped.
In that same store we also saw a lot of clothing return fraud. We did not ink tag everything, since ink tags were a new item and we wanted to see the impact, but we did tag a number of higher priced jackets and denim items. I clearly remember “customers” attempting to return clothing items with spots of dye on them. It was apparent they had tampered with the ink and tried to protect the garment and their efforts had failed. Excuses ranged from, “I don’t know how that got on there” to “They forgot to take the tag off when I bought it so I tried to take it off myself.” The return would be denied and the “customer” left with a useless piece of clothing.
The tags we were using in my first store were a first generation product and designed only to deter theft and prevent fraudulent returns, they were not capable of working with an EAS alarm. The Alpha ink tags are a superior device because they provide visual deterrence, being large enough to stand out when placed in a conspicuous location on a garment. They will sound the EAS alarm if someone attempts to walk out of the store without having the device removed from the clothing at the point of sale. Of course if someone were to get the tagged clothing out of the store somehow, if they attempt to remove the tag they will, in all probability stain the clothing, rendering it useless for wear OR return.
Whether your store specializes in selling sporting goods clothing or you sell blue jeans, you can benefit from Alpha ink tags. You may find that you can prevent shoplifting and fraud with one easy solution. Reap the rewards of investing in ink tags.
For more information on Alpha Ink Tags contact us or call 1.770.426.0547
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Target Harden Your Business With Alpha Hard Tags to Prevent Shoplifting
Shoplifting has long been a threat to retailers nationwide but never has it been considered as much as a threat as it is now. Recent studies having it overtaking internal theft as the greatest threat to retail businesses today. Part of that threat is from the growing concern with organized retail crime (ORC) which is targeting small shops as well as large businesses to effectuate their goals. This makes it more important than ever to do everything we can to prevent shoplifting from taking our merchandise. To that end, we have to consider ways in which we can “target harden” our merchandise and keep it out of the hands of organized crime as well as the everyday opportunistic shoplifter.
This has to be thought out clearly as the merchandise being targeted by organized crime is not much different than what the opportunistic shoplifter is trying to get his or her hands on. Everyone likes high-end electronics and all those sweet gadgets that our genius inventors are coming up with but everything from razor blades and eyeglasses to anything else you can hang on a hook is a potential target for shoplifting.
We are not alone in the fight, however. We have many technological partners who have been fighting right alongside of us to stop shoplifting. Electronic article surveillance (EAS), everyone will agree, was one of the greatest technological advances ever made on the behalf of retailers to help attack shoplifting. Checkpoint Systems has leveraged EAS technology in their systems to help us protect our merchandise. Their Alpha line of products is designed to protect this merchandise. The Alpha Jewel Lok is a specially designed EAS package that secures your jewelry and keeps it leaving from your store without being detected by your EAS system. Alpha has many other retail anti-theft devices that are designed for specific applications. The eyewear tag protects your high-end sunglasses as well as prescription and reading glasses which are an easy target of shoplifters due to their ease of concealability. The Alpha ink tag ensures that you clothing items stay in your store, are detected by your EAS system or as a last resort have no serviceability when the ink stains the garment when the supposedly successful shoplifter tries to remove the Alpha ink tag. There is also the Alpha hang tag that protects those razor blades and other merchandise that you hang on hooks. Checkpoint Systems and Alpha, have a retail anti-theft solution for about any product you want to protect.
All of these solutions help us keep our merchandise in our stores and out of the hands of the criminal enterprise member as well as that young teen who happened to see that cool piece of jewelry hanging from your jewelry rack and wants to help herself to it. Think about it. What else could you do? You could lock that piece of jewelry in the cabinet and get it out every time the customer wants to see it. Is that worth it for low cost or mid cost merchandise? The Alpha Jewel Lok will work to protect it without you having to go to the expense of that staff member opening and closing cabinets all day.
We could also do the same thing with those razorblades in order to prevent shoplifting. You could put them in that locking cabinet and have a staff member get it out each time the customer wanted to try to figure out which razor blade he needed for his razor. Instead you can put the blades on the rack with confidence and let the Alpha hang tag protect it.
Whether it is the Alpha jewel lok, the Alpha hang tag, the Alpha ink tag or another Alpha product, you have an electronic article surveillance partner out there to help you stop shoplifting. We need to leverage that partnership and ensure that we target harden, reducing the expense to our business and to pass on costs to the consumer. All the shrink losses in our business from internal theft, shoplifting, and pure loss need to be reduced but there is so much we can do to “target harden” our business and prevent shoplifting.
For more information on Alpha hard tags contact us or call 1.770.426.0547.
Shoplifting has long been a threat to retailers nationwide but never has it been considered as much as a threat as it is now. Recent studies having it overtaking internal theft as the greatest threat to retail businesses today. Part of that threat is from the growing concern with organized retail crime (ORC) which is targeting small shops as well as large businesses to effectuate their goals. This makes it more important than ever to do everything we can to prevent shoplifting from taking our merchandise. To that end, we have to consider ways in which we can “target harden” our merchandise and keep it out of the hands of organized crime as well as the everyday opportunistic shoplifter.
This has to be thought out clearly as the merchandise being targeted by organized crime is not much different than what the opportunistic shoplifter is trying to get his or her hands on. Everyone likes high-end electronics and all those sweet gadgets that our genius inventors are coming up with but everything from razor blades and eyeglasses to anything else you can hang on a hook is a potential target for shoplifting.
We are not alone in the fight, however. We have many technological partners who have been fighting right alongside of us to stop shoplifting. Electronic article surveillance (EAS), everyone will agree, was one of the greatest technological advances ever made on the behalf of retailers to help attack shoplifting. Checkpoint Systems has leveraged EAS technology in their systems to help us protect our merchandise. Their Alpha line of products is designed to protect this merchandise. The Alpha Jewel Lok is a specially designed EAS package that secures your jewelry and keeps it leaving from your store without being detected by your EAS system. Alpha has many other retail anti-theft devices that are designed for specific applications. The eyewear tag protects your high-end sunglasses as well as prescription and reading glasses which are an easy target of shoplifters due to their ease of concealability. The Alpha ink tag ensures that you clothing items stay in your store, are detected by your EAS system or as a last resort have no serviceability when the ink stains the garment when the supposedly successful shoplifter tries to remove the Alpha ink tag. There is also the Alpha hang tag that protects those razor blades and other merchandise that you hang on hooks. Checkpoint Systems and Alpha, have a retail anti-theft solution for about any product you want to protect.
All of these solutions help us keep our merchandise in our stores and out of the hands of the criminal enterprise member as well as that young teen who happened to see that cool piece of jewelry hanging from your jewelry rack and wants to help herself to it. Think about it. What else could you do? You could lock that piece of jewelry in the cabinet and get it out every time the customer wants to see it. Is that worth it for low cost or mid cost merchandise? The Alpha Jewel Lok will work to protect it without you having to go to the expense of that staff member opening and closing cabinets all day.
We could also do the same thing with those razorblades in order to prevent shoplifting. You could put them in that locking cabinet and have a staff member get it out each time the customer wanted to try to figure out which razor blade he needed for his razor. Instead you can put the blades on the rack with confidence and let the Alpha hang tag protect it.
Whether it is the Alpha jewel lok, the Alpha hang tag, the Alpha ink tag or another Alpha product, you have an electronic article surveillance partner out there to help you stop shoplifting. We need to leverage that partnership and ensure that we target harden, reducing the expense to our business and to pass on costs to the consumer. All the shrink losses in our business from internal theft, shoplifting, and pure loss need to be reduced but there is so much we can do to “target harden” our business and prevent shoplifting.
For more information on Alpha hard tags contact us or call 1.770.426.0547.
DON’T STAIN YOUR SOCKS WITH ALPHA INK TAGS!
Most large retailers have one thing in common for the most part; they sell socks. Think about any big box or chain store and quickly realize that I’m right. (Or you can just trust that I’ve done the research). You know what else is common to those retailers (mine included) and those socks? They get stolen. Every hour of every day of every week, they and most likely you, are losing money to thieves who are stealing your socks! You may simply overlook hosiery as a major shrink category, but I can tell you personally, in my stores two years ago, I lost about $25k in that category per store. That is a significant amount of loss. Loss that could be easily prevented with an Alpha Ink Tag.
Almost every customers that comes into my store to purchase a pair of shoes will likely also leave with a pair of socks. Those bulk socks weren’t the problem, but the athletic socks. I carry some single pairs that retail for $15.99 or higher. Not only were these being stolen in massive amounts by every passing teenager, they were very easy to resell, which made them a prime target for organized retail crime groups. I needed something to prevent shoplifting, as the theft of these socks alone were greatly impacting our bottom line.
After seeing the inventory loss creep up to such a substantial number, I decided to look into ways to better secure this product. I needed something that would do its job to prevent shoplifting, but also keep the product easily accessible to the customer. I couldn’t very well go locking up bags of cotton being a glass case now! I tried a few different options like soft tags and even pencil tags, but nothing gave me the results I was after quite like the Alpha Ink Tags.
Right off the bat, the Alpha Ink Tag has more of a deterrence simply in its appearance. You’d be surprised at how many shoplifters attempt to steal these items and quickly abandoned them when they notice that tag. The thieves were not willing to take the chance of destroying the product with ink by removing the tag. Once I saw just how effective they were in preventing shoplifting, we jumped head first in tagging each and every pair of socks we had over $9.99. My supervisor thought I was going a bit over-board, but I knew the problem we faced and I also knew that a little effort to prevent theft would go a long way to increase profits.
With the tag placed on the back of the product, the normal shopper cannot tell that there is such a large diameter tag protecting the merchandise. Since the vast majority of people don’t try on socks before purchasing them, it didn’t affect our sales one bit. This was the perfect balance between customer service and loss prevention. More importantly, it worked. It stopped those socks from walking out the door, all with just a minor investment in technology and labor. Over the course of the past year I seen our stores post very nice sales increases in the hosiery category. More importantly, the losses have dwindled from a high of $25k all the way down to a mere few hundred dollars. I’d say if you’re not using ink tags, then you’re definitely letting money walk right out the door!!
For more information, contact us: Alpha Ink Tags, or call 1.770.426.0547
Most large retailers have one thing in common for the most part; they sell socks. Think about any big box or chain store and quickly realize that I’m right. (Or you can just trust that I’ve done the research). You know what else is common to those retailers (mine included) and those socks? They get stolen. Every hour of every day of every week, they and most likely you, are losing money to thieves who are stealing your socks! You may simply overlook hosiery as a major shrink category, but I can tell you personally, in my stores two years ago, I lost about $25k in that category per store. That is a significant amount of loss. Loss that could be easily prevented with an Alpha Ink Tag.
Almost every customer that comes into my store to purchase a pair of shoes will likely also leave with a pair of socks. Those bulk socks weren’t the problem, but the athletic socks. I carry some single pairs that retail for $15.99 or higher. Not only were these being stolen in massive amounts by every passing teenager, they were very easy to resell, which made them a prime target for organized retail crime groups. I needed something to prevent shoplifting, as the theft of these socks alone were greatly impacting our bottom line.
After seeing the inventory loss creep up to such a substantial number, I decided to look into ways to better secure this product. I needed something that would do its job to prevent shoplifting, but also keep the product easily accessible to the customer. I couldn’t very well go locking up bags of cotton being a glass case now! I tried a few different options like soft tags and even pencil tags, but nothing gave me the results I was after quite like the Alpha Ink Tags.
Right off the bat, the Alpha Ink Tag has more of a deterrence simply in its appearance. You’d be surprised at how many shoplifters attempt to steal these items and quickly abandoned them when they notice that tag. The thieves were not willing to take the chance of destroying the product with ink by removing the tag. Once I saw just how effective they were in preventing shoplifting, we jumped head first in tagging each and every pair of socks we had over $9.99. My supervisor thought I was going a bit over-board, but I knew the problem we faced and I also knew that a little effort to prevent theft would go a long way to increase profits.
With the tag placed on the back of the product, the normal shopper cannot tell that there is such a large diameter tag protecting the merchandise. Since the vast majority of people don’t try on socks before purchasing them, it didn’t affect our sales one bit. This was the perfect balance between customer service and loss prevention. More importantly, it worked. It stopped those socks from walking out the door, all with just a minor investment in technology and labor. Over the course of the past year I saw our stores post very nice sales increases in the hosiery category. More importantly, the losses have dwindled from a high of $25k all the way down to a mere few hundred dollars. I’d say if you’re not using ink tags, then you’re definitely letting money walk right out the door!!
For more information on Alpha Ink Tags contact us or call 1.770.426.0547
