6 WAYS RETAILERS ARE MANAGING PUSHOUT THEFT, SHOPLIFTING, AND STAFF SKIMMING.
If the headlines are to be believed, our post-pandemic, inflationary, recessionary retail world is seeing rates of pushout theft, smash and grabs, shoplifting, and staff skimming soar.
CTV News recently reported on a study suggesting that retail fraud has increased as much as 15% during the pandemic.
A Globe and Mail article highlights that shoplifters are getting more aggressive with groceries, seeing meat, cheeses, and over-the-counter medicine disappear.
While these stories spotlight the never-ending challenge all retailers face, brazen Organized Retail Crime (ORC) attacks in the US are raising the stakes:
- “40 to 50 looters wielding hammers and other tools looted Sam’s Jewelers, breaking glass cases and quickly fleeing.” 1
- “A Bay Area Nordstrom, police say, as many as 80 thieves executed a coordinated attack on the store.” 2
- “At another Nordstrom…thieves were caught on video assaulting workers with bear spray.” 3
- “At a Louis Vuitton boutique…more than a dozen robbers overwhelmed sales clerks and made off with $120,000 in loot.” 4
- “…Thieves used a hammer to smash their way into a closed Givenchy boutique and left with $80,000 in designer duds.” 5
As Amanda Mull wrote in The Atlantic article The Great Shoplifting Freak-Out:
“Retail theft, organized or not, affects some kinds of stores more than others. Big-box stores, discount stores, and drugstores—which tend to be thinly staffed and stock lots of small, easy-to-steal, easy-to-flip products—experience more losses from sales-floor theft than, say, furniture stores do…”
And of course, we’ve not even touched on employee theft. A 2019 report out of the UK estimated losses from staff ranked 2/5 categories:
- Customers theft – £1471 million
- Staff theft – £1305 million
- Supplier and warehouse crime – £915 million
- Organized Retail Crime (ORC) – £562 million
- Cybercrime-led theft – £414 million
Whether it’s everyday customers stealing goods for their own use, petty criminals running gift card and shoplift & return scams, or OCG rings openly reselling stolen goods online – whatever the motives – retailers are investing in proven systems and also piloting brand new technologies to get losses under control.
In this post, I’m going to share:
Retail Loss Prevention Tactic #1: Electronic Article Surveillance (EAS)
The first line of defence for every retailer is an EAS system.
Simply, attach security tags to your goods and install electronic sensors to gate every entrance/exit. When shoplifters walk out with tagged goods alarm bells ring.
There are many types of EAS systems and devices, each using a combination of electro-magnetic, acousto-magnetic, radio frequency, microwave, and more to track goods within your store:
Sticker Tags – simple and cost-effective, tags are affixed to your items and deactivated at checkout.
Pin Tags – used for fashion, clothing security tags are pinned to each article of clothing and removed at checkout.
Spider or Turtle wraps – these sensor devices are wired alarms that wrap a cable around, or are tethered to, your products. If a cable is cut, the alarm built into the device sounds. If a product is removed from the store, the alarm sounds. If a tether is removed, the alarm sounds.
Retail Loss Prevention Tactic #2: Display & Fixture Lockups
Purolator has an in-house team that looks after all POS setups and video displays, however, our team played a key role in producing and installing graphics, wraps, wayfinding and signage.
Standard lockups include
Display lockups – glass displays or wire fixtures that require a staff member to unlock the cabinets.
Hook locks – these plastic stop locks are attached to the end of a peg or slat hook, keeping goods from being pulled off a hook without a key.
Locking hooks – these peg or slat hooks have a built-in plastic stopped that locks goods in place.
Tethers and locking straps – cut-resistant wire cables and breaded lines secure goods to your fixtures. Tethers allow your customers to touch, pickup and try out the products without being able to remove them.
Retail Loss Prevention Tactic #3: Parking Lot Surveillance
Popping up in parking lots across the country, a handful of national retailers have started testing new surveillance systems like the remote parking lot tower featured below.
100% solar-powered and remote, according to LVT (the manufacturer of these units) they have “successfully paired cutting edge security with convenience, mobility, and speed.”
These security trailers/towers pair with software to allow you to view live feeds, watch recordings, check thermal signatures, speak through the two-way speaker, set up alerts and surveillance zones, and even move the cameras.
So when the detects movement in the area, a series of pre-set actions can auto-start by the system including:
- Live recording initiated
- Alerts sent to you or your team
- Strobe lights/security lights turned on
- Auto talk-down messages announced over a loudspeaker
If you want to learn more, here’s a great guide from LVT.
Retail Loss Prevention Tactic #4: AI-Driven Facial Recognition
While CCTV security systems are an old-school technique, if you’ve ever sat through hours of footage looking for when/how an incident took place, you know the biggest challenge with these systems is information overload. Too many camera angles, and too much redundant footage. It’s tedious and the people who are to monitor everything get bored.
That’s why AI-driven security systems drive a ton of value.
Companies like Oosto have been developing Facial Recognition software, which depending on local privacy laws, gives retailers real-time shoplifter identification.
Advanced systems like these allow you to:
- Spot shoplifters in real-time – Get notifications when a known shoplifter or security risk enters your store.
- Deter theft & protect privacy – Instead of having to memorize hundreds of faces of known shoplifters, get alerted in real-time when they enter your store while simultaneously protecting the identities of good customers.
- Advanced privacy mode – this technology complies with privacy regulations while giving you additional tools to configure privacy needs, including bystander blurring, dynamic data retention times, and hard data deletes.
Retail Loss Prevention Tactic #5: Bluetooth “Locked” Devices
The tech blog Gizmodo highlighted that many retailers including Home Depot are working with manufacturers to develop Bluetooth locked devices:
“In a bid to crack down on organized retail crime, Home Depot is piloting a program where power tools must be activated via Bluetooth at checkout—or they won’t work. It’s a clever solution to deter theft, but it also highlights how technology can sometimes change gadget ownership in unintended ways.” (Victoria Song)
The thinking is that the extra step of Bluetooth activation will turn goods with high resale values into bricks. The extra benefit is that retailers can avoid having to keep these items in locked display cases.
Of course, ORC groups are crafty, so this tactic will only work if the “locks” can not be cracked.
Retail Loss Prevention Tactic #6: Locking Shopping Carts
Shopping carts with locking wheels are nothing new. For decades now retailers have used magnetic wheel locks to help keep their carts on their property.
What is new and exciting is the ability to integrate wheel-locking shopping carts with your EAS system for pushout prevention.
Pushout theft is when “shoppers” fill their carts with your goods and then simply walk (or run) out the door.
The idea is that by integrating locking carts with your EAS:
- As a thief attempts to leave the pushout prevention system locks the cart in place
- This keeps your goods in the cart, and in your store
- Most thieves will walk away empty-handed
- As shoplifters fail time and again, ORC groups will look for easier targets
WE DESIGN-BUILD RETAIL ENVIRONMENTS
At CBSF we design-build retail environments, displays, and fixtures with your business and the entire shopping experience in mind.
This means we consider function, design, and esthetics – but we also integrate security, accessibility, and logistics into everything we create.
Looking for help with your next project?
Contact our retail design-build team to get a project plan and quote now!
