Fitting Room Theft

You know the drill. At the end of the day, you find your merchandise tags on the floor or hidden in your fitting rooms. Shoplifters bring your merchandise into a fitting room and put it on under their clothes. Sometimes many layers of your apparel are under the clothes they wore in.

One in ten people that walk through your doors is there to steal. It is a fact of retail life. Studies show that a large percentage of these thieves are female and under the age of thirty. This feeds into the fact that the average retailer’s inventory shrink from shoplifting is approximately 35%.

Shoplifters conceal your merchandise in a variety of ways, in a stroller, pockets, a booster bag, booster clothing or like mentioned above, simply wearing your merchandise out of your store under their clothing. All of these methods require one thing, privacy, even if only for a few seconds. What better place to get privacy in a retail store than a fitting room. Shoplifters can take their time. And because some fitting rooms are handicap accessible, it is not a problem to bring that shoplifting vehicle (stroller) right in with them.

What can you do to protect yourself from theft that a fitting room helps to facilitate? Start with fitting room design:

• Fitting rooms should not be located in out of the way areas. I prefer high-traffic areas.
• Walls should be smooth and continuous with no decorations, picture frames, signs… that a shoplifter can hide or dispose of a price tag.
• Mirrors should be permanently attached to the wall and the edges should be caulked to keep the thieves from hiding labels behind them.
• Avoid carpeting in the fitting room. Carpet can be pulled up and labels can be hidden there. If you have to use carpet, ensure it is one piece and the edges are securely glued to the flooring.
• Doors should not go all the way to the floor.  This still provides privacy but does not give the shoplifter a complete feeling of privacy.
• Doors should have a lock that is called a “storeroom” style. This means that a key is always required to unlock the door and that cannot be changed by turning the knob on the other side.
• Bright lighting helps your legitimate shopper but gives the shoplifter less of a feeling of privacy.
• CCTV cameras in plain sight outside of the fitting room doors. The area outside of a fitting room is the perfect place for a public view monitor so customers see that the system is live.
• Chimes that alert staff when a fitting room door opens.
• Seating such as benches should be fixed or built in. Any seams, cracks should be sealed. The underside of the bench should be a smooth surface that will not facilitate the hiding of tags.
• Cove base and shoe mold should be securely mounted, the edges glued and caulked.

Of course, all of this is worthless without proper procedures and a trained staff:

• Consider fitting room attendants that count garments in/out.
• Key control. Staff must never leave a key in the fitting room door.
• For high volume and multiple fitting rooms use a number tag system.
• Consider limiting the number of items a customer can take into the fitting room at one time.
• Staff should be trained to keep an eye on anyone who they have let into a fitting room. This is not just a theft concern but also customer service. Your staff can keep track of merchandise and help the customer with different sizes.
• Do not allow merchandise to build up outside the fitting room. Besides presenting a sloppy appearance, a disorganized area allows shoplifters to more easily conceal merchandise and tags.
• Customer service, customer service, customer service…

Make sure that when you do have an incident that you bring it to the attention of all staff members so everyone can learn from it. Even though the key to preventing this kind of theft is customer service, you may still have more than acceptable losses. At that point, it is time for a Checkpoint System. The tags on the merchandise are working 24/7 and will alarm even if the stolen merchandise is under the shoplifters clothing.

Contact us at 770-426-7593 if you have any questions about this topic, would like our help or if you would like a quote on a Checkpoint System.