It still never stops amazing me at the sheer number of people who will shoplift. While my job is to come up with ever changing innovations to prevent shoplifting, there are a group of people out there that will constantly evolve and find ways to defeat my methods. It’s a continuous game of cat and mouse with the loser paying full price for the item with no return. The retailer I now work for has begun increasing the amount of electronic accessory carried in the stores. With an increase in expensive electronics, comes an increase in people trying to steal them.
Heart rate monitors are a very popular item, especially as we head into the New Year. With millions of Americans making resolutions to get in shape, a heart rate monitor is a vital part of one’s training regimen. You cannot keep these locked up, or you won’t sell them. Customers want to feel them and read the specs in addition to making sure the product won’t be overly bulky as they go about their workout routines. With some reaching prices of $300, we needed a solution to prevent shoplifting of these items.
We started out by using some basic checkpoint labels, but found that it wasn’t a good enough deterrent. We were still losing the product. We wanted to use the Alpha Spider Wrap, but due to our budget constraints, we couldn’t invest too heavily in the product. As it was, we were selling the product very close to cost in order to beat out any completion. Any added value services would erode the tiny margin we had. We eventually found and utilized the iS Surround Spider Wrap. It’s a one alarm tag that gave the deterrent of a more sophisticated alarm. It was simply deactivated at the register and the customer removed it at home.
We weren’t being targeted by a normal shoplifter when it came to our heart rate monitor assortment. I had several investigations regarding a group of organized criminals that were stealing thousands of dollars’ worth of heart rate monitors at a time, and reselling on various online platforms. The way the tag is designed, it would deface the packaging once removed, thus greatly discouraging our professional thieves. It’s very hard to sell an item that looks like it was stolen, and this tag did just that. Over the course of 7-9 months after deploying the tags, we saw a reduction in activity by this group. They had moved on to other retailers, as we had apparently discouraged their illicit activities with a very simple solution.
I talk with store managers on a very regular basis and they all want to know how they can best prevent shoplifting. The truth, no matter if you want to believe it or not, is that you will never stop external losses completely. Someone with enough motivation will find fault in your security measures. Having the right tools in place though, will minimize those losses.
For more information, contact us: Prevent Shoplifting, or call 1.770.426.0547
It still never stops amazing me at the sheer number of people who will shoplift. While my job is to come up with ever changing innovations to prevent shoplifting, there are a group of people out there that will constantly evolve and find ways to defeat my methods. It’s a continuous game of cat and mouse with the loser paying full price for the item with no return. The retailer I now work for has begun increasing the amount of electronic accessories carried in the stores. With an increase in expensive electronics, comes an increase in people trying to steal them.
Heart rate monitors are a very popular item, especially as we head into the New Year. With millions of Americans making resolutions to get in shape, a heart rate monitor is a vital part of one’s training regimen. You cannot keep these locked up, or you won’t sell them. Customers want to feel them and read the specs in addition to making sure the product won’t be overly bulky as they go about their workout routines. With some reaching prices of $300, we needed a solution to prevent shoplifting of these items.
We started out by using some basic Checkpoint Labels, but found that it wasn’t a good enough deterrent. We were still losing the product. We wanted to use the Alpha Spider Wrap, but due to our budget constraints, we couldn’t invest too heavily in the product. As it was, we were selling the product very close to cost in order to beat out any completion. Any added value services would erode the tiny margin we had. We eventually utilized the Alpha Spider Wrap.
We weren’t being targeted by a normal shoplifter when it came to our heart rate monitor assortment. I had several investigations regarding a group of organized criminals that were stealing thousands of dollars’ worth of heart rate monitors at a time, and reselling on various online platforms. The way the Spider Wrap is designed, it would deface the packaging once removed, thus greatly discouraging our professional thieves. It’s very hard to sell an item that looks like it was stolen, and this Spider Wrap did just that. Over the course of 7-9 months after deploying the tags, we saw a reduction in activity by this group. They had moved on to other retailers, as we had apparently discouraged their illicit activities with a very simple solution.
I talk with store managers on a very regular basis and they all want to know how they can best prevent shoplifting. The truth, no matter if you want to believe it or not, is that you will never stop external losses completely. Someone with enough motivation will find fault in your security measures. Having the right tools in place though, will minimize those losses.
For more information, contact us: Prevent Shoplifting Loss, or call 1.770.426.0547
