Stop Shoplifting-3 WC Blog 157
Checkpoint labels-3
“Witless” Protection Program; Trying To Stop Shoplifting And Dumb Criminals, True Loss Prevention Stories Part I
Looking back on my U.S. Air Force experiences and my Loss Prevention experiences, I have to
wonder what some people were thinking (or not thinking as the case may be) when they
committed their crimes. Some people commit criminal acts, and in return for testifying against
others, they are exonerated or given plea deals, they may even be placed in a Witness
Protection Program. In my efforts to stop shoplifting, I have never dealt with those people. I, on the other hand, have dealt with some who should have been placed in a “Witless Protection Program” because they just…well, let my examples speak for themselves.
In one store which I worked, our team frequently focused efforts to stop shoplifting in the jewelry department where we saw a high stock shortage percentage. One day I watched a teenage girl as she stopped at a jewelry counter and began looking at earrings on countertop displays. I observed her select and place a pair of earrings in her pants pocket and head for the doors. Our earrings did not have any Checkpoint labels on the backers so unfortunately, no alarm sounded when people would exit with stolen earrings. Well, that turned out to be the case this time. The young lady exited, no alarm sounded, but I knew she had the merchandise so I stopped her and returned with her to go to the security office. As we arrived in the office, my shoplifter had a sudden “asthma attack”. I might have taken it seriously had I not observed her sliding the earrings from her pocket and trying to hide them underneath her posterior as she slid down the wall to the floor. She was very dramatic, wheezing, breathing hard and holding her chest with her free hand. I informed my suspect that if she got a break during her asthma attack I would appreciate it if she could hand me the earrings she had taken out of her pocket and was sitting on. It didn’t take too long before the “asthma attack” was over. Earrings recovered and teenager turned over to mom.
It isn’t always easy to stop shoplifting of some merchandise because it is so small it can be hard to detect. Then there are situations when it is apparent someone has stolen merchandise, but the suspect is clueless. In another store where I was the Loss Prevention Manager, I encountered a “Nitwit” thief who decided to steal a Maglite flashlight. If you aren’t familiar with these items they are the large, aluminum flashlights often carried by police officers. This particular flashlight is nearly one foot in length. I watched from the end of the aisle as the perpetrator removed the flashlight from the peghook and placed it down the front of his pants. It was so long it stuck out of the top of his waistband. These items were protected with Checkpoint labels and when I followed him to the front of the store, as he started through the Checkpoint antennas, the alarm did sound and I stopped him. Once we were back in the security office he tried to deny he had anything despite the alarm activation AND until I pointed out the part of the flashlight that I could see! Yes, another candidate for the “Witless Protection Program”.
During my time in the U.S. Air Force, I was a Law Enforcement Specialist. On one occasion when I was on patrol I received a call to respond to a location for an attempted suicide. When I arrived I pulled in front of a red, fastback Ford Mustang and noticed a young man was sitting on the curb in front of this unique, classic car looking rather sheepish. The driver who was standing beside the suspect told me the young man had decided to try to kill himself by jumping in front of his car. The driver turned the Airman over to my custody and left. As I took the slightly inebriated Airman into custody I explained to him that the next time he decided to try to commit suicide, it would be best not to do it in front of the Base Commander’s car! My prisoner would have been a perfect fit for the “Witless Protection Program”.
There are plenty of thieves and just plain dumb criminals out there. Some are shoplifters. For those who shoplift Checkpoint labels work and can stop shoplifting. Keep your “wits” about you and protect the merchandise in your store and keep profits up.
Need information on Checkpoint labels? Give us a call at 1.770.426.0547 now.
Looking back on my U.S. Air Force experiences and my Loss Prevention experiences, I have towonder what some people were thinking (or not thinking as the case may be) when theycommitted their crimes. Some people commit criminal acts, and in return for testifying againstothers, they are exonerated or given plea deals, they may even be placed in a WitnessProtection Program. In my efforts to stop shoplifting, I have never dealt with those people. I, on the other hand, have dealt with some who should have been placed in a “Witless Protection Program” because they just…well, let my examples speak for themselves.
In one store which I worked, our team frequently focused efforts to stop shoplifting in the jewelry department where we saw a high stock shortage percentage. One day I watched a teenage girl as she stopped at a jewelry counter and began looking at earrings on countertop displays. I observed her select and place a pair of earrings in her pants pocket and head for the doors. Our earrings did not have any Checkpoint labels on the backers so unfortunately, no alarm sounded when people would exit with stolen earrings. Well, that turned out to be the case this time. The young lady exited, no alarm sounded, but I knew she had the merchandise so I stopped her and returned with her to go to the security office. As we arrived in the office, my shoplifter had a sudden “asthma attack”. I might have taken it seriously had I not observed her sliding the earrings from her pocket and trying to hide them underneath her posterior as she slid down the wall to the floor. She was very dramatic, wheezing, breathing hard and holding her chest with her free hand. I informed my suspect that if she got a break during her asthma attack I would appreciate it if she could hand me the earrings she had taken out of her pocket and was sitting on. It didn’t take too long before the “asthma attack” was over. Earrings recovered and teenager turned over to mom.
It isn’t always easy to stop shoplifting of some merchandise because it is so small it can be hard to detect. Then there are situations when it is apparent someone has stolen merchandise, but the suspect is clueless. In another store where I was the Loss Prevention Manager, I encountered a “Nitwit” thief who decided to steal a Maglite flashlight. If you aren’t familiar with these items they are the large, aluminum flashlights often carried by police officers. This particular flashlight is nearly one foot in length. I watched from the end of the aisle as the perpetrator removed the flashlight from the peghook and placed it down the front of his pants. It was so long it stuck out of the top of his waistband. These items were protected with Checkpoint labels and when I followed him to the front of the store, as he started through the Checkpoint antennas, the alarm did sound and I stopped him. Once we were back in the security office he tried to deny he had anything despite the alarm activation AND until I pointed out the part of the flashlight that I could see! Yes, another candidate for the “Witless Protection Program”.
During my time in the U.S. Air Force, I was a Law Enforcement Specialist. On one occasion when I was on patrol I received a call to respond to a location for an attempted suicide. When I arrived I pulled in front of a red, fastback Ford Mustang and noticed a young man was sitting on the curb in front of this unique, classic car looking rather sheepish. The driver who was standing beside the suspect told me the young man had decided to try to kill himself by jumping in front of his car. The driver turned the Airman over to my custody and left. As I took the slightly inebriated Airman into custody I explained to him that the next time he decided to try to commit suicide, it would be best not to do it in front of the Base Commander’s car! My prisoner would have been a perfect fit for the “Witless Protection Program”.
There are plenty of thieves and just plain dumb criminals out there. Some are shoplifters. For those who shoplift Checkpoint labels work and can stop shoplifting. Keep your “wits” about you and protect the merchandise in your store and keep profits up.
Need information on Checkpoint labels? Give us a call at 1.770.426.0547 now.
Checkpoint labels-3 WC Blog 152
Stop shoplifting-3
Lack of Checkpoint Labels Leads To A Trickle Down Theory
On occasion when I am discussing my Loss Prevention experience with others the question usually arises, “You must have some interesting stories to tell?” As a matter of fact, I do have a couple that I enjoy sharing. I was never of the mindset that someone should be allowed to get away with shoplifting. As long as there was nothing more pressing happening in the store I expected my Loss Prevention team to stop all shoplifters (within company guidelines) or if it was a small item, to make every effort to deter theft. One area we were having a lot of petty theft in was our collector cards near the end of the checkout lanes. There was a popular collector card series out at the time, based on a children’s television cartoon that was the object of many juvenile shoplifters. We tagged our boxed sets of cards with Checkpoint labels to stop shoplifting but we did not do so with individual card packs due to the quantities we carried and some were source tagged by the vendor inside the packaging.
Let me briefly take a moment to mention what the Checkpoint labels are. Labels come in a number of styles, but they are “soft” tags that are designed with a circuit in the tag that is designed to work with the radio frequency of a Checkpoint security system electronic article surveillance antenna (EAS). The labels are placed on merchandise at the store and in some cases by vendors who “source tag” merchandise inside the packaging. Tags are “turned off” when passed over deactivation pads at the point of sale, usually integrated in the point of sale scan beds. When someone attempts to steal merchandise that is tagged, the tag is not deactivated and will set off the EAS antenna alarms.
So, one day I was walking through the store doing audits on high theft merchandise and I heard the sound of cellophane being torn open, one of those things that always perked up my ears. I started to walk down the back row of the area I was in and noticed a young boy, perhaps 5 or 6 years old standing in an aisle with his back to me. He was opening some type of packaging, but I had not seen him select anything although I could guess it was one of our collectable card packs. It was merely my intention to simply stop shoplifting by startling him and getting him to put the cards down and leave. I walked up behind the young fella and said, “Hello”. He turned to look at me with a petrified look on his face. I looked at the cards in his hand, and the torn packaging and asked what kind of cards he had. The boy did not respond, his mouth was hanging open and his eyes were wide. I asked again about the cards in his hands and then I heard something that sounded like water spilling on the tile floor. I looked down and wouldn’t you know it, the young man was urinating himself and on our floor. Being a parent myself, I was sympathetic and asked for assistance in a spill cleanup and took the boy to the front where I paged for his mother. Mom came up and I explained what had happened. I let her know I thought the he may have learned his lesson and said he was probably embarrassed enough at having wet himself. Mom apologized for her son, bought him a pair of jeans and left.
It has been my experience that when merchandise has Checkpoint labels on them and they are placed in a visible location on a package, they have a strong deterrent value and can stop shoplifting. In my case above, there was no visible label and even had there been the young man may not have been old enough to be deterred, but an adult may have been.
Need more information on Checkpoint labels? Give us a call at 1.770.426.0547 now.
On occasion when I am discussing my Loss Prevention experience with others the question usually arises, “You must have some interesting stories to tell?” As a matter of fact, I do have a couple that I enjoy sharing. I was never of the mindset that someone should be allowed to get away with shoplifting. As long as there was nothing more pressing happening in the store I expected my Loss Prevention team to stop all shoplifters (within company guidelines) or if it was a small item, to make every effort to deter theft. One area we were having a lot of petty theft in was our collector cards near the end of the checkout lanes. There was a popular collector card series out at the time, based on a children’s television cartoon that was the object of many juvenile shoplifters. We tagged our boxed sets of cards with Checkpoint labels to stop shoplifting but we did not do so with individual card packs due to the quantities we carried and some were source tagged by the vendor inside the packaging.
Let me briefly take a moment to mention what the Checkpoint labels are. Labels come in a number of styles, but they are “soft” tags that are designed with a circuit in the tag that is designed to work with the radio frequency of a Checkpoint security system electronic article surveillance antenna (EAS). The labels are placed on merchandise at the store and in some cases by vendors who “source tag” merchandise inside the packaging. Tags are “turned off” when passed over deactivation pads at the point of sale, usually integrated in the point of sale scan beds. When someone attempts to steal merchandise that is tagged, the tag is not deactivated and will set off the EAS antenna alarms.
So, one day I was walking through the store doing audits on high theft merchandise and I heard the sound of cellophane being torn open, one of those things that always perked up my ears. I started to walk down the back row of the area I was in and noticed a young boy, perhaps 5 or 6 years old standing in an aisle with his back to me. He was opening some type of packaging, but I had not seen him select anything although I could guess it was one of our collectable card packs. It was merely my intention to simply stop shoplifting by startling him and getting him to put the cards down and leave. I walked up behind the young fella and said, “Hello”. He turned to look at me with a petrified look on his face. I looked at the cards in his hand, and the torn packaging and asked what kind of cards he had. The boy did not respond, his mouth was hanging open and his eyes were wide. I asked again about the cards in his hands and then I heard something that sounded like water spilling on the tile floor. I looked down and wouldn’t you know it, the young man was urinating himself and on our floor. Being a parent myself, I was sympathetic and asked for assistance in a spill cleanup and took the boy to the front where I paged for his mother. Mom came up and I explained what had happened. I let her know I thought the he may have learned his lesson and said he was probably embarrassed enough at having wet himself. Mom apologized for her son, bought him a pair of jeans and left.
It has been my experience that when merchandise has Checkpoint labels on them and they are placed in a visible location on a package, they have a strong deterrent value and can stop shoplifting. In my case above, there was no visible label and even had there been the young man may not have been old enough to be deterred, but an adult may have been.
Need more information on Checkpoint labels? Give us a call at 1.770.426.0547 now.
I got my inventory results for this past year, and they were a lot worse than I had expected. I just took over this location a few months ago, and I knew the controls were lacking before my arrival, but we missed our shrink budget by over $2,000. I figured out a couple of the worst categories, books and soda, were caused by vendor paperwork errors and those have since been corrected. I can at least look forward to a swell next year. However, we have had some significant thefts in the cosmetics section and of course, that was our worst category for shrink. We had figured out who was in the group that was hitting us and we had to create an action plan to stop shoplifting in that quadrant of the store.
We went through and adhered Checkpoint Labels to our entire stock of foundations and lipsticks over a period of two weeks. I saw the ring leader of the group enter the store about three weeks ago. At the time I didn’t know it was her, but something about her made me suspicious. I even had a feeling right then that she was our makeup thief. I watched her for a bit, and then I got called to the front checkout to assist with a customer. I hated to leave her unattended, but I have to put my paying customers first. I was able to watch her from the front and I could see she was picking up lipsticks and quickly replacing them. I knew right then those Checkpoint Labels were working and I knew that woman was our culprit. She was able to get to a spot where I couldn’t see her, and she stole some eyeliners and mascaras. She did not activate the alarm on the Checkpoint Systems because we had not tagged those items. I was able to verify the theft later via camera footage.
Then last week, exactly two weeks from the day I figured out who the thief was, I was working the evening shift. I was just about to leave to take the deposit to the bank, when someone down one of the aisles caught my eye. You guessed it! It was her. I smiled at her, went back to the front, and told my cashier to call the police. Then I went outside quickly to figure out where the getaway car was. I walked over behind the car and jotted down the license plate number. (There was a dude in the driver’s seat, glaring at me in the mirror! I seriously did not care at that point though. Enough was enough.) Then I went back inside and verified her position in the store. I walked past her and the only thing in her cart was her giant purse. I asked her if she needed help and she said she was fine. Then her phone rang. I walked back toward the front to see if the police had arrived and not long after that she came to the front. She approached me and loudly asked me why I went out and got information from the car. I calmly told her I did it in case she left before the police came; I wanted them to be able to find her. She was not pleased with my answer. In the cart she was pushing were several packages of name brand facial care items. (All that added up to over $400 retail) She left it all and stormed out the door. They pulled out of the parking lot, but were pulled over right afterward.
I would like to point out that all the stuff she had chosen to steal this time were all lacking Checkpoint Labels. Our “stop shoplifting” plan was working in cosmetics so she moved over to a different category. She knew she couldn’t defeat our Checkpoint Systems, so she was carefully choosing items that were not protected.
Get more information on Checkpoint Labels. Contact us or call today 1.770.426.0547
Stop Shoplifting-4 WC Blog 157
Checkpoint labels-3
“Witless” Protection Program; Trying To Stop Shoplifting And Dumb Criminals, True Loss Prevention Stories Part I
Over the course of my careers, I have had to stop shoplifting, arrest intoxicated persons, conduct traffic stops for traffic violations, etc. Looking back on my U.S. Air Force experiences and my Loss Prevention experiences, I have to wonder what some people were thinking (or not thinking as the case may be) when they committed their crimes. Some people commit criminal acts, and in return for testifying against others, they are exonerated or given plea deals, they may even be placed in a Witness Protection Program. I have never dealt with those people. I, on the other hand, have dealt with some who should have been placed in a “Witless Protection Program” because they just…well, let my examples speak for themselves.
In one store which I worked, our team frequently focused efforts to stop shoplifting in the jewelry department where we saw a high stock shortage percentage. One day I watched a teenage girl as she stopped at a jewelry counter and began looking at earrings on countertop displays. I observed her select and place a pair of earrings in her pants pocket and head for the doors. Our earrings did not have any Checkpoint labels on the backers so unfortunately, no alarm sounded when people would exit with stolen earrings. Well, that turned out to be the case this time. The young lady exited, no alarm sounded, but I knew she had the merchandise so I stopped her and returned with her to go to the security office. As we arrived in the office, my shoplifter had a sudden “asthma attack”. I might have taken it seriously had I not observed her sliding the earrings from her pocket and trying to hide them underneath her posterior as she slid down the wall to the floor. She was very dramatic, wheezing, breathing hard and holding her chest with her free hand. I informed my suspect that if she got a break during her asthma attack I would appreciate it if she could hand me the earrings she had taken out of her pocket and was sitting on. It didn’t take too long before the “asthma attack” was over. Earrings recovered and teenager turned over to mom.
It isn’t always easy to stop shoplifting of some merchandise because it is so small it can be hard to detect. Then there are situations when it is apparent someone has stolen merchandise, but the suspect is clueless. In another store where I was the Loss Prevention Manager I encountered a “Nitwit” thief who decided to steal a Maglight flashlight. If you aren’t familiar with these items they are the large, aluminum flashlights often carried by police officers. This particular flashlight is nearly one foot in length. I watched from the end of the aisle as the perpetrator removed the flashlight from the peghook and placed it down the front of his pants. It was so long it stuck out of the top of his waistband. These items were protected with Checkpoint labels and when I followed him to the front of the store, as he started through the Checkpoint antennas, the alarm did sound and I stopped him. Once we were back in the security office he tried to deny he had anything despite the alarm activation AND until I pointed out the part of the flashlight that I could see! Yes, another candidate for the “Witless Protection Program”.
During my time in the U.S. Air Force, I was a Law Enforcement Specialist. On one occasion when I was on patrol I received a call to respond to a location for an attempted suicide. When I arrived I pulled in front of a red, fastback Ford Mustang and noticed a young man was sitting on the curb in front of this unique, classic car looking rather sheepish. The driver who was standing beside the suspect told me the young man had decided to try to kill himself by jumping in front of his car. The driver turned the Airman over to my custody and left. As I took the slightly inebriated Airman into custody I explained to him that the next time he decided to try to commit suicide, it would be best not to do it in front of the Base Commander’s car! My prisoner would have been a perfect fit for the “Witless Protection Program”.
There are plenty of thieves and just plain dumb criminals out there. Some are shoplifters. For those who shoplift Checkpoint labels work and can stop shoplifting. Keep your “wits” about you and protect the merchandise in your store and keep profits up.
Need information on Checkpoint labels? Give us a call at 1.770.426.0547 now.
Over the course of my careers, I have had to stop shoplifting, arrest intoxicated persons, conduct traffic stops for traffic violations, etc. Looking back on my U.S. Air Force experiences and my Loss Prevention experiences, I have to wonder what some people were thinking (or not thinking as the case may be) when they committed their crimes. Some people commit criminal acts, and in return for testifying against others, they are exonerated or given plea deals, they may even be placed in a Witness Protection Program. I have never dealt with those people. I, on the other hand, have dealt with some who should have been placed in a “Witless Protection Program” because they just…well, let my examples speak for themselves.
In one store which I worked, our team frequently focused efforts to stop shoplifting in the jewelry department where we saw a high stock shortage percentage. One day I watched a teenage girl as she stopped at a jewelry counter and began looking at earrings on countertop displays. I observed her select and place a pair of earrings in her pants pocket and head for the doors. Our earrings did not have any Checkpoint labels on the backers so unfortunately, no alarm sounded when people would exit with stolen earrings. Well, that turned out to be the case this time. The young lady exited, no alarm sounded, but I knew she had the merchandise so I stopped her and returned with her to go to the security office. As we arrived in the office, my shoplifter had a sudden “asthma attack”. I might have taken it seriously had I not observed her sliding the earrings from her pocket and trying to hide them underneath her posterior as she slid down the wall to the floor. She was very dramatic, wheezing, breathing hard and holding her chest with her free hand. I informed my suspect that if she got a break during her asthma attack I would appreciate it if she could hand me the earrings she had taken out of her pocket and was sitting on. It didn’t take too long before the “asthma attack” was over. Earrings recovered and teenager turned over to mom.
It isn’t always easy to stop shoplifting of some merchandise because it is so small it can be hard to detect.Then there are situations when it is apparent someone has stolen merchandise, but the suspect is clueless. In another store where I was the Loss Prevention Manager I encountered a “Nitwit” thief who decided to steal a Maglight flashlight. If you aren’t familiar with these items they are the large, aluminum flashlights often carried by police officers. This particular flashlight is nearly one foot in length. I watched from the end of the aisle as the perpetrator removed the flashlight from the peghook and placed it down the front of his pants. It was so long it stuck out of the top of his waistband. These items were protected with Checkpoint labels and when I followed him to the front of the store, as he started through the Checkpoint antennas, the alarm did sound and I stopped him. Once we were back in the security office he tried to deny he had anything despite the alarm activation AND until I pointed out the part of the flashlight that I could see! Yes, another candidate for the “Witless Protection Program”.
During my time in the U.S. Air Force, I was a Law Enforcement Specialist. On one occasion when I was on patrol I received a call to respond to a location for an attempted suicide. When I arrived I pulled in front of a red, fastback Ford Mustang and noticed a young man was sitting on the curb in front of this unique, classic car looking rather sheepish. The driver who was standing beside the suspect told me the young man had decided to try to kill himself by jumping in front of his car. The driver turned the Airman over to my custody and left. As I took the slightly inebriated Airman into custody I explained to him that the next time he decided to try to commit suicide, it would be best not to do it in front of the Base Commander’s car! My prisoner would have been a perfect fit for the “Witless Protection Program”.
There are plenty of thieves and just plain dumb criminals out there. Some are shoplifters. For those who shoplift Checkpoint labels work and can stop shoplifting. Keep your “wits” about you and protect the merchandise in your store and keep profits up.
Need information on Checkpoint labels? Give us a call at 1.770.426.0547 now.
Checkpoint label-4 WC blog 75
EAS labels-5
Stop Shoplifting-3
Electronic Article Surveillance-3
Make It Clear Thieves Are Not Welcome – Use 3210 Clear Checkpoint Labels
I recall the days when I worked as a Loss Prevention Manager and part of my job responsibilities included ensuring our merchandise protection strategies were properly employed. This included the training of a Merchandise Protection Team Member and my Loss Prevention Team Members who would assist in tagging and securing product. We had a lot of product we tagged, compact discs, video game software, computer software, digital video discs, health and beauty products, and so on. At the time we were using EAS labels (electronic article surveillance) that were solid white and had corporate information printed on them. I had to make sure that as my team tagged merchandise, as much as possible, product information and warnings were not covered up. Certainly you could never cover up a barcode that just caused havoc at the register (and an uncomfortable conversation with the store manager for me). In many cases this was a challenging task, especially if you consider the size of some health and beauty products and the lengthy warnings and usage directions on those products. There were even items I would like to have tagged, but the tags we had were too large and simply would not fit. Other items we would tag were rounded, such as large vitamin bottles. We did tag them but trying to get those tags to curve to fit the bottles was tricky. Checkpoint labels have evolved over the years. There are now options available that make it an effective tool to stop shoplifting of almost any product.
One Checkpoint label now available is the 3210 Clear EP Label. This label offers the protections afforded by larger, more traditional EAS labels but they have a clear, see through window that other EAS labels don’t have. These tags are also extremely small and can be placed on some of the smallest cosmetic products, such as lipsticks and mascara bottles. The window of the tag can be placed over a barcode and the barcode can still be scanned (no more uncomfortable conversations with a store manager!). Often cosmetics were a high shortage department for our store because we could not protect the products adequately to stop shoplifting. The items tend to be very small so concealment is easy, dropping them into purses or shopping bags or simply slipping them into pants pockets. Many Loss Prevention teams don’t make apprehensions for cosmetic theft alone because the merchandise is so small and there is a significant chance to make a bad stop. Now with the 3210 Clear EP label, should a shoplifter attempt to steal a piece of merchandise they are going to set off the electronic article surveillance antennas as they try to exit the store.
Being small does not make this Checkpoint label any less effective than other EAS labels. In fact, should a store use Checkpoint’s Evolve Electronic Article Surveillance platform, the performance of the 3210 Clear EP Label is increased up to 60%. As I consider the benefits of these labels, I know from experience that professional shoplifters depend on speed and stealth to be able to hit stores multiple times. They don’t want to risk an EAS alarm as they exit a store so they either try to avoid merchandise tagged with EAS labels or they try to remove labels. If they are stealing cosmetics, they are not counting on having to try to remove multiple little labels before concealing the products. The deterrence value of the 3210 label is going to stop shoplifting, or at least a large amount of it.
Your business may carry small products from medicines to cosmetics and until now you may not have been able to do much to prevent shortage due to theft. Today you can stop theft shrinkage by tagging your products with 3210 Clear Checkpoint label. Make it “clear” to thieves they aren’t welcome in your store.
For more information on Checkpoint labels contact us or call 1.770.426.0547
I recall the days when I worked as a Loss Prevention Manager and part of my job responsibilities included ensuring our merchandise protection strategies were properly employed. This included the training of a Merchandise Protection Team Member and my Loss Prevention Team Members who would assist in tagging and securing product. We had a lot of product we tagged, compact discs, video game software, computer software, digital video discs, health and beauty products, and so on. At the time we were using EAS labels (electronic article surveillance) that were solid white and had corporate information printed on them. I had to make sure that as my team tagged merchandise, as much as possible, product information and warnings were not covered up. Certainly you could never cover up a barcode that just caused havoc at the register (and an uncomfortable conversation with the store manager for me). In many cases this was a challenging task, especially if you consider the size of some health and beauty products and the lengthy warnings and usage directions on those products. There were even items I would like to have tagged, but the tags we had were too large and simply would not fit. Other items we would tag were rounded, such as large vitamin bottles. We did tag them but trying to get those tags to curve to fit the bottles was tricky. Checkpoint labels have evolved over the years. There are now options available that make it an effective tool to stop shoplifting of almost any product.
One Checkpoint label now available is the 3210 Clear EP Label. This label offers the protections afforded by larger, more traditional EAS labels but they have a clear, see through window that other EAS labels don’t have. These tags are also extremely small and can be placed on some of the smallest cosmetic products, such as lipsticks and mascara bottles. The window of the tag can be placed over a barcode and the barcode can still be scanned (no more uncomfortable conversations with a store manager!). Often cosmetics were a high shortage department for our store because we could not protect the products adequately to stop shoplifting. The items tend to be very small so concealment is easy, dropping them into purses or shopping bags or simply slipping them into pants pockets. Many Loss Prevention teams don’t make apprehensions for cosmetic theft alone because the merchandise is so small and there is a significant chance to make a bad stop. Now with the 3210 Clear EP label, should a shoplifter attempt to steal a piece of merchandise they are going to set off the electronic article surveillance antennas as they try to exit the store.
Being small does not make this Checkpoint label any less effective than other EAS labels. In fact, should a store use Checkpoint’s Evolve Electronic Article Surveillance platform, the performance of the 3210 Clear EP Label is increased up to 60%. As I consider the benefits of these labels, I know from experience that professional shoplifters depend on speed and stealth to be able to hit stores multiple times. They don’t want to risk an EAS alarm as they exit a store so they either try to avoid merchandise tagged with EAS labels or they try to remove labels. If they are stealing cosmetics, they are not counting on having to try to remove multiple little labels before concealing the products. The deterrence value of the 3210 label is going to stop shoplifting, or at least a large amount of it.
Your business may carry small products from medicines to cosmetics and until now you may not have been able to do much to prevent shortage due to theft. Today you can stop theft shrinkage by tagging your products with 3210 Clear Checkpoint label. Make it “clear” to thieves they aren’t welcome in your store.
For more information on Checkpoint labels contact us or call 1.770.426.0547
