Shoplifting and Security; Are You Prepared?

Security personnel engaging in following or chasing shoplifters outside the premises, should proceed with caution.  The laws, the dangers, and the safety net a store provides, are not longer on the security’s personnel side while outside the premises.  After you leave the store, you are vulnerable, and the dangers abound.  Keeping and stopping a shoplifter within store limits is the best decision for your safety.

To read more about shoplifting news, follow the links below.


Colorado Springs police officer fatally shoots shoplifter following foot chase

No information has been released about the shoplifting suspect

The name, gender and age of the shoplifting suspect have not been released.The officer who killed the shoplifter is on routine paid administrative leave pending an investigation by deputies of the El Paso County Sheriff’s Office, said Jacqueline Kirby, sheriff spokeswoman.

An employee from the Walmart store at 3201 E. Platte Ave. called police about the shoplifter at 11:30 p.m. Monday, Kirby said.At first, one officer responded to the shoplifting call. A foot chase ensued as this officer identified the shoplifting suspect, she said.A second officer joined the pursuit that led to the 3200 block of Bijou Avenue. The officers caught up with the suspect a few minutes after midnight, Kirby said.


Acting U of L foundation CFO fired after shoplifting arrest at U of L Golf Club

Interim University of Louisville president Greg Postel’s efforts to re-shape the image of the U of L foundation aren’t exactly off to a rousing start.Robert “Bob” Mims, who was recently hired on the recommendation of Postel as an independent contractor to serve as the acting CFO for the foundation, was fired following an arrest for theft and shoplifting in Simpsonville on Wednesday.

Card Chronicle can confirm that the location of that theft was the clubhouse of the U of L Golf Club, where Mims was reportedly inquiring about a membership given his new position at the university. An employee at the golf club called the police once Mims had left. The police then pulled Mims car over, where he confessed to the crime.Mims had worked for the foundation for only two weeks and was fired following the news of his arrest.

This apparently was not Mims’ first foray into this particular brand of theft. A source tells CC that another local country club recently discovered camera footage of Mims stealing more than $800 worth of merchandise from its clubhouse and circulated his picture to other golf clubs throughout the area.


Retailers Tackle Growing Consumer Expectations With Integrated Supply Chains

Shoppers have access to almost any product at any time and fulfillment times are shrinking by the month. With almost constant availability, consumers are asking ‘where?’ and ‘when?’ while retailers are increasingly asking themselves ‘how do we meet customer expectations?’

In the turbulent and unpredictable market, with e-tail’s growing presence, and with consumer expectations constantly growing, running a fully integrated supply chain is vital. Good communication and joined-up operations lead to better decisions and in turn to lower inventory levels, better availability, less waste and more sales.

Yet siloing, where one hand doesn’t know what the other hand is doing, remains far too common and produces the opposite results.For instance, very few retailers consider space management part of their supply chain replenishment process. This is because space is not generally the responsibility of the Supply Chain Director. This is a typical silo-driven mentality and, in modern retailing, it exposes businesses to higher risks.



 

Shoplifting and Illicit Drugs

For many years now, police departments and local shop owners have worked together to prevent shoplifting in their communities.  The relationship between drugs, alcohol and shoplifting are problems that they know exist and they intend to face and find solutions for them.

The bureau of Justice Statistics research found that more than half of the women arrested for shoplifting tested positive for illicit drugs, compared to two-thirds of the men. 

Police departments want to help retailers fight the shoplifting problem by being proactive and acknowledging the fact that drug addiction and shoplifting go hand in hand.

For more about this and other stories, follow the links below.


Honey, I Shrunk The Store.

While the “retail apocalypse” narrative is nonsense, it’s clear that we are witnessing a major contraction in traditional retail space. Store closings have tripled year over year and more surely loom on the horizon. The “death of the mall” narrative also tilts to the hyperbolic, but in many ways it is the end of the mall as we know it, as dozens close and even larger number are getting re-invented in ways big and small.

While the shrinking of store fleets gets a lot of attention, another dynamic is becoming important. Increasingly, major retailers are down-sizing the average size of their prototypical store. In some cases, this is a solid growth strategy. Traditional format economics often don’t allow for situating new locations in areas with very high rents or other challenging real estate circumstances. Target’s urban strategy is one good example. In other situations, smaller formats allow for a more targeted offering, as with Sephora’s new studio concept.


Police in Mentor are trying to stop shoplifting before it happens

Mentor police say that, according to the statistics, their shoplifting surveillance program is working, and fewer drug abusers have been arrested shoplifting.

Three years ago, officers in the Mentor Police Department noticed a correlation between drug use and “theft rings.” The department received a grant from the state to start the Retail Crime Theft Deterrence program. Officers who participate in the program keep an eye on retail stores in the city of Mentor looking for suspicious behavior, and for known drug abusers who have a history of shoplifting or other crimes.

The program, now in its third year, points to statistics showing a decline of admitted drug users arrested for shoplifting.

In 2015, police said 62 percent of those arrested for shoplifting were admitted drug addicts. That number went up to 72 percent in 2016, but so far this year, 37 percent of those arrested for shoplifting admit having problems with drugs.

According to information from the Bureau of Justice Statistics, more than half of women arrested for theft, and nearly two thirds of men, test positive for illicit drugs when they are arrested.

Mentor police Officer Jim Collier said retailers appreciate the program


Serial shoplifter who bit supermarket worker walks free from court

A SHOPLIFTER who bit a supermarket worker has avoided an immediate jail sentence.

Kerry Gallimore, of Chaucer Grove, Atherton, assaulted an Asda employee causing him actual bodily harm after being caught stealing food to the value of £78 in the town on January 13.

In other shoplifting offences committed in Atherton, the 28-year-old also stole plants to the value of £24 and £15 from Tesco on April 18 and May 25 respectively and £50 worth of make-up from Boots on June 15.

Gallimore was also convicted of dishonestly receiving a stolen 43-inch smart television valued at £600 in Atherton on May 3 and two counts of failing to turn up at Wigan and Leigh Magistrates’ Court after being released on police bail.


 

Can Your Shelving Prevent Shoplifting? Oh Yeah!!!

Retail shelving along with store design has a huge impact on shoplifting losses. Typically a shoplifter likes and needs privacy even if only for a moment. So why not keep that in mind when designing or remodeling your store. Your shelving and isles can work for you by simply considering several factors.

Shelving height can be critical. It may be tempting to have shelves go all the way to the ceiling. However, this creates cover for shoplifters. They feel more secure when they cannot be seen. Shelving that allows your staff to see over and keep track of customers make a shoplifter uncomfortable.

Do not create dead sports. Shoplifters will pick up your merchandise and head for “dark areas” of your store. Areas when they can remove packaging, pricing… and have time to conceal it.

Speaking of lighting. Make sure that you align lighting with your isles. Not only will that encourage sales but again, adequate lighting will not allow shoplifters to get comfortable.

You should also put some thought into your end cap displays. Move small or high value merchandise to end caps that are easily seen by your staff. Likewise place merchandise that is larger and lesser value on end caps that face away from staff.

When designing your stores’ layout consider the foot traffic of staff, customers and shoplifters. We want retail staff and even back office personnel to routinely visit all areas of the store. It may be tempting to have a single direct path but that could leave a number of areas rarely visited by staff throughout the day. That is a gold mine for shoplifters. They watch staff traffic and will naturally migrate to areas less traveled.

Likewise you want your good customers to assist you with shoplifting prevention. They can do this in two ways. If your store is laid out in such a way that keeps legitimate customers spread out and in all areas of the store not just focused in one or two places, then they help you with removing privacy from the shoplifter.

Another technique to shut off shoplifters is to make your legitimate customers into your store security, without the customer even knowing it. You can use a PA system or even radios that can be heard by the public (not on a headset) for this.

To do this make a “ghost call”. If you suspect that shoplifters are in the store then on the PA system say “security to section 3…,” then watch what happens! Legitimate customers will not care, they are not in the mindset to steal. They are focused on what they are looking at. At most they may look up and around, then simply go back to what they were doing. Shoplifters on the other hand will react differently. By calling security to an “area” that is not marked or corresponds to anything such as isle number… the shoplifter does not know what is going on. And that legitimate customer that then happens to come into the isle or area they are in now becomes an undercover store detective regardless of age, gender…. You can even assign ghost calls to staff as a responsibility to be made randomly every hour or so.

All of this because of a little forethought on your part and shelving design help.

Bill Bregar is a 30+ year loss prevention expert. Bill was the Director of Loss Prevention for several major retailers and is now the President of Loss Prevention Systems, Inc. LPSI specializes in Checkpoint Systems anti-shoplifting equipment. He has personally apprehended many shoplifters and over 2300 employees stealing from their employers. Bill can be reached at: [email protected] or at 770-426-0547


Didn’t Your Momma Teach You Better? Inside The Mind Of A Shoplifter

Growing up did you ever do something dumb and your mom or your dad would ask you, “What were you thinking?” Having lived in south for the past 32 years I have learned of the local colloquialism when someone does something stupid, “Didn’t your momma teach you better?” Unfortunately, as a young boy I did a lot of dumb things making me wonder if my brain developed a lot later in life than most people. For example, I had a propensity for walking behind batters warming up to go to the plate for my father’s teen baseball teams. I ended up with more than one fat lip from my stupidity…obviously not learning the lesson the first time. I had a fascination with electrical outlets and wires and old rotary dial telephones…I won’t go into details but no they didn’t work when the wires were pushed into the outlet, I was not injured but I had one very busy guardian angel.  What goes on inside of the mind of a child? I have NO idea and my wife and I have raised THREE of them! The same can be said for shoplifters I have no idea what goes on inside their heads. I can speculate on it, having caught hundreds of them but I am not convinced they have developed their brains yet.

Where I live is a tourist area. In order to get to the beaches and hotels you have to cross over one of any number of bridges. We have a saying around here that tourists leave their brains on the other side of the waterway before crossing the bridge…because they do DUMB things. It may well be that shoplifters leave their brains at home before venturing out. Here are some of examples of what I mean:

  • You have a criminal history for shoplifting and are currently on probation. You walk into a store and decide it is a good idea to steal some clothing. Then, when you are caught you ask if you can be let go and you won’t come in again. “Have you lost your mind?”
  • You shoplift and get chased and have the audacity to stop and put your hand in your purse and suggest you have a gun. Police draw down on you and put you on the ground to arrest you. Oh that’s right you also had a prior arrest for involuntary manslaughter on your record as well as multiple shoplifting violations. “What were you thinking?”
  • You make a decision to shoplift, get away with it and come back later that night and steal again. You are stopped and run but the Loss Prevention Officer grabs your purse as you flee. Yes, you get away but wait a minute, what did you have in your purse? Oh, a butcher knife and your prison I.D. card since you happen to be on parole. “Didn’t your momma teach you better?”
  • You have a station wagon loaded with television sets you’ve been stealing from hotels. What do you do since you obviously have plenty of time on your hands? You park out front of a store in the fire lane by the front doors, go into the store, steal a video player and walk out the door. Not only do you set off the Checkpoint EAS tower, Loss Prevention has been watching you. You are approached by L.P. and run. It just so happens that about 8 police officers have been outside following you from the hotels. Why it only makes sense you would run from them too, and try to jump in your station wagon, start it and nearly run into a police car. You are surprised by the fact you are physically dragged out of your car and face-planted in the pavement? Don’t forget to pick up your brain from the other side of the bridge when you do get released from jail.
  • You shoplift from a store, Loss Prevention chases you and you pull out pepper spray. You decide to try to use it but the L.P. person is smart enough to keep their distance. A police officer arrives on scene, is about to arrest you and in a moment of shear and total stupidity, you elect to pepper spray HIM! That’s a special kind of STUPID!

What’s in the mind of a shoplifter? I don’t know. The question always elicits the usual responses of, “They can’t help it,” “They didn’t understand what they were doing,,” , etc. I say someone didn’t ask them, “Didn’t your momma teach you better?” then give them a good swat on the posterior when they were younger. And yes, all of those things really happened.


Social Media and Shoplifting

Social media has brought many changes to businesses around the world.  One of the biggest changes that many businesses take advantage of with social media platforms, is the ability to market their business without spending thousands of dollars doing so. Marketing is not only for the big 500 companies, now the small mom and pop shop can and does market their business using social media as well.

It is no wonder then, that business owners are using social media to protect themselves, and warn other businesses  of potential shoplifters.  By posting video and written posts using Facebook and other mediums, businesses are taking security in their own hands.


Home Depot responds after firing Pearland employee who chased shoplifters

A former Pearland Home Depot employee who tried to stop three shoplifters was fired because his actions could have endangered employees or the general public, a Home Depot spokesman said Monday.

According to an interview given by former employee Jim Tinney to KTRK, Tinney saw three men attempting to leave the store in June, with tool sets they had not paid for. Tinney attempted to stop them by throwing an object at their feet.

Tinney did not immediately return calls to the Chronicle for information.

Home Depot’s policy prevents employees from attempting to stop shoplifters, said Stephen Holmes, director of corporate communications


Washington’s New Biometric Privacy Law: What Businesses Need to Know

With the rise in hackings and data breaches, companies and government agencies are looking for ways to protect their data that offer more security than passwords. Because passwords are easily lost, stolen, guessed, and cracked by hackers, companies are shifting to the use of biological characteristics that uniquely identify you, called biometric identifiers. For example, financial institutions and online retailers are developing ways to authenticate a purchase by requiring a user to take a selfie and smile, wink, or make another gesture. A stolen password could be easily reused, but faking a user’s arbitrary facial expression is more complicated.

But along with the strength of biometric identifiers comes new risks. When hackers steal your password, you change it. But when hackers acquire your fingerprint or facial scan, you can’t change either. Indeed, biometric identifiers are often selected for their permanence. For example, many companies are investing in scanners that identify a person based on the pattern of veins in their fingertip, rather than their fingerprint. A person’s vascular identity is harder to forge than a fingerprint and it changes less over time.


Recent rash of shoplifting infuriates business owners

Juneau store owners turn to social media to ID suspects

A recent rash of shoplifters has caused local business owners to take to social media, posting surveillance video screenshots in the hopes of identifying the perpetrators and warning other storekeepers.

In one suspect’s case, she was quickly identified as having hit two different businesses in one week — and the same woman has been charged in a shoplifting at downtown store Shoefly a little more than a month ago.

With the exception of the woman charged in connection with the shoplifting incident at Shoefly, the Empire is not printing the names of the suspects as identified on social media, because they have not been arrested or charged.


 

How To Hire Talented People For Your Business

Hiring talented people for your business is going to cost you, and it should.  Hiring good employees takes time and money.  It is not only the salary you are going to offer when you hire an employee that is going to cost you, but the perks you offer them as well.  Hiring a good employee should be a tried process that you or your company have developed.  The cost associated with hiring a new employee is not something to take lightly.  And for the retail industry, the difference between hiring a good employee or a bad one can have bad financial consequences from the start.     Follow the links below for more about this topic.


Want To Hire Great Employees? Fix Your Broken Recruiting Process

It is sad that business leaders still complain about “talent shortages” when anyone who has applied for a job lately knows that the standard corporate or institutional recruiting process is badly broken.

It isn’t talent shortages that keep employers and willing and capable job-seekers apart. It’s the broken-down state of the recruiting process!

Leaders who are serious about hiring great people need to examine their own internal practices and fix whatever is broken.

Here is a simple checklist of common breakdowns to get them started:

Ten Broken Recruiting Practices To Fix

1. Job ads are too often written in an opaque, insulting way that doesn’t even try to sell a job-seeker on the opportunity — but instead lists endless Essential Requirements that few if any working people possess.


Can A Change In Retail Hiring Practices Help Save America’s Department Stores?

In their early days, department stores were the epitome of innovation. Towards the end of the 19th century, Marshall Field was challenging the old-fashioned notion that shopping should be conducted purely out of necessity. By emphasizing customer service (his famous motto: “give the lady what she wants”), offering luxury amenities for his clientele and turning shopping into a full-blown experience, he truly revolutionized the retail industry. At the turn of the century, his protégé Harry Selfridge brought the mentality of “the customer is always right” from Chicago to London, further revolutionizing the industry through ingenious marketing stunts and a customer-first approach at Selfridges & Co. 

Just one century later, the advent of the internet has once again revolutionized the retail experience – unfortunately, not to the benefit of most brick-and-mortar retailers. These days, shoppers don’t need to visit their local department store to purchase a new pair of shoes – thanks to the internet, they’re now spoiled with options in all kinds of colors, styles and sizes. Nowadays, we can purchase virtually any style of shoe from anywhere in the world at a competitive price point, and, for the most part, still receive fairly decent customer service.


A key portion of the retail apocalypse has been going on for decades

A significant consequence of the downturn in brick-and-mortar retailing is that thousands of people are losing their jobs. 

In May, there were nearly 19,000 fewer people working in department stores compared to January, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, amid a record pace of store closures. This is happening because the US has built too many stores since the 1990s, and online shopping is booming.

A look back shows that retail jobs have been declining as a share of overall employment since the late 1980s.

“Employment in grocery stores, department stores, electronics stores, furniture stores, etc. has been declining as a share of total employment since 1989,” wrote Torsten Slok, the chief international economist at Deutsche Bank, in a note on Wednesday.

“Another way of saying this is that we have seen less growth in the retail sector relative to other sectors in the economy. Put differently, it is nothing new that the retail sector is underperforming, and looking at the absolute level of employment in retail it is currently close to the highest level in twenty years.”


 

“I Can Out Sell My Theft & Inventory Shortage”….. Yeah Right

If you believe that you can outsell your cash or inventory losses due to theft, you probably won’t be in business for long. Or if you do survive, you are no way living up to the margins you deserve. In my 35+ years of loss prevention particularly helping medium to small retailers, I have heard this more times than I can believe.

Consider this, as an example, if you have a net 2% profit over all. In other words after taxes, rent, payroll, merchandise cost, insurance…. you clear 2 cents on the dollar. Then a $100 dollar loss will cost you $5000 (100÷.02). Yes, FIVE THOUSAND DOLLARS. You will have to purchase, ship, receive, stock and sell another $5K just to BREAK EVEN on a $100 loss. I doubt even a drug dealer would make money that way.

Don’t delude yourself. 

Now on the flip side. I do not advocate that you turn your store into a six sided steel box to protect yourself from shoplifting, employee theft, vendor fraud and paperwork errors. Exactly the opposite. I want you to have an open, friendly and inviting environment for your legitimate customers and employees. What you can’t be is naive to your shrinkage and loss problems.

First, realize that you must do inventories at a minimum quarterly, more often if things are seriously out of whack. Cycle counts for individual SKU’s that seem to be loss problems are also important. Do not wait until the end of a quarter or heaven forbid end of year to find out you have a problem. You have to go on offense not defense. Theft and shrink are business problems. Nothing more, nothing less. We can easily show you how to do this. You do not have a retail LP issue that has not been seen and dealt with before.

In regard to employee theft what are your hiring practices. As an LP professional that has personally conducted over 2300 investigations and interrogations of employees involved in theft, I started looking up the drain pipe to see where it is all coming from.  It starts with the application and employment interviewing.

For shoplifting; Do you and your staff know really know how shoplifters act. Probably not. Shoplifters are easy to spot. You just need to know what to look for. Stopping them is incredibly easy. Again, you just need to apply the correct tools and training.

But all of this is for nothing, if your retail attitude is not straight.

Another problem is business apathy. The “oh I am so busy I do not have time”. You don’t have time to keep your profits on your bottom line and not the thief’s? Then why are you doing all this? Making a living for you, your family and employees is all what it is about.

I have had people steal from me. It doesn’t feel good and it makes me angry.  I work really hard and try to work smart to provide my family’s income and the income for my employees. But the thought of simply covering it up in my own mind is unthinkable. It should be for you also.

Go on the attack. Fix your loss problems before they happen. Remember, we can help you with that. We are simply an email or phone call away.

Have a super retail day!


Look For Red Flags When Reviewing Applications And Interviewing Job Candidates

How many of you have done IT? You know the IT I’m talking about. You looked at an application, interviewed the candidate, had a bit of an unsettled feeling about him or her but hired them anyway. IT may be a few days, a few weeks or a few months later but IT becomes a reality, buyer’s remorse. You hired someone who turns out to be a dud. It may be they are calling out of work on a regular basis or perhaps they aren’t following directions on tasks you are assigning them. It may be that you think they are stealing money or merchandise from you. Whatever the problem you just wish you hadn’t hired this person. It is frustrating to make those types of employment decisions, but don’t feel like your small retail store is all alone because you have to make these hiring choices yourself. It even happens to big companies that have Human Resources departments dedicated to trying to hire and retain the best employees.

There are things the smaller store owners and managers can do to try to improve their chances of hiring good applicants for their stores:

  • First and foremost, if you aren’t doing background checks consider hiring Loss Prevention Systems Inc. (LPSi) to do them for you. Their team can dig into a candidate’s past to verify they aren’t hiding important information from you. They can do criminal background checks, verify employment, validate driving records, and so much more. By having a background check company conduct pre-employment screenings on your candidates you also protect your business from potential liability lawsuits if your employee were to harm someone while acting as a representative of your business.
  • When you are reviewing applications look for red flags on the application itself. This could be a significant gap between jobs. While a month up to three months may be explained as just a difficult time finding employment, more than that may be a cause for concern but not necessarily a deal breaker on its own.
  • Look for brief periods of employment or a pattern of going from one job to another, sometimes known as job hopping. While some of this may be expected from a teenager or a college student who may have to find summer work between spring and Fall Semesters it should not be the case for someone out of school for a year or so. Job hopping could indicate someone who has problems at work either with the job itself or the manager. It could also indicate someone who has been stealing and quit before being caught.
  • If your application asks if a former employer may be contacted, look out when the applicant indicates “no” and/or leaves the former supervisor’s name off of the application. There could be a reason they don’t want you to contact that employer.
  • When conducting interviews look for the way the applicant dresses. Regardless of how casual the atmosphere of a business may be it should still be expected that an applicant will come to the interview in at least business casual attire. If an applicant does not care enough to make an attempt to impress the boss in an interview it is highly unlikely they will attempt to impress the boss in their job performance.
  • Look for eye contact from the applicant during an interview. Some people do not know how to interview, have been out of the workforce for a while or may just be nervous so some glancing around is to be expected. On the other hand, there should be some eye contact and if it seems the person is avoiding it, you should consider this a red flag.
  • Cell phones! While they seem to be a necessity of life, they do have an off button. If your candidate fails to mute a phone and it goes off during an interview let it raise a flag. If the applicant asks if you mind if they take the call, I suggest you end the interview at that point. Very few life and death matters take place during an interview. It is more a matter of poor planning. They didn’t take time to mute their phone, turn it off or tell someone where they would be at the time of the interview. If you aren’t more important than that phone during an interview you won’t be more important when they start working for you.

When you hire someone you invest a lot of time and money in them. When you have to get rid of them you start the whole process over and invest more money. Don’t throw good money after bad, recognize red flags and hire right the first time.


Shoplifting, Employee and Vendor Theft: Is There A Solution?

Employee theft, shoplifting, and vendor theft are problems that the retail industry faces every single day without a clear solution. The billions of dollars lost to these crimes is a constant problem for retailers, and the losses have to be accounted for someplace else, and they need to make them up somehow to minimize their losses.  The amount of sales retailers need to cover any losses is significant and not easy to do. Is preventing the loss the first step to stop the crime? Read more about this topic by clicking the links below.


Wage Theft and Shoplifting: Same Cost, Different Deterrents

The treatment of these two kinds of crime, however, are completely different.

Many more resources go into trying to deter, detect, and punish the guy trying to pinch a video game system off the shelf at the local big-box store than into the grand theft the store itself may be perpetrating against its own employees—even if the retailer is taking millions of dollars from workers’ paychecks. It’s one more way that the economic crimes of the powerful are treated far less seriously than the transgressions of those with less power.


Task force teaches businesses how to thwart fraud, theft

The enormous number of ways criminals can defraud shoppers and business owners requires increasing awareness about how to combat their efforts, Greenwich police detective and state financial crimes task force member Mark Solomon told attendees of a Monday panel on how to combat identity theft and retail fraud.

“It’s a constant cat-and-mouse game — there’s always a vulnerability criminals will learn to exploit,” Solomon said during his presentation. “It’s not if (criminals) do have our information, but how many times over they have it.”

Due to its wealth and slowness to adopt more secure credit card technology, the United States has become a prime target for cybercrime and fraud, according to Solomon and his co-presenter Christopher Riley, resident agent in charge of the U.S. Secret Service’s Connecticut financial crimes task force.


Employee retail theft soars says new report

When it comes to insider theft and employee dishonesty, the news is not good for the nation’s retailers. At least that is what Mark Doyle, president of Jack L. Hayes International, one of the leading loss prevention and inventory shrink control consulting firms in the world, confides as the group announced the results from their 29th Annual Retail Theft Survey this week.

The 23 large retailers who were surveyed comprise 16,038 stores across the country with over $370 billion in sales in 2016 and they reported 438,000 incidents of shoplifting and employee theft where suspects were apprehended. A staggering $120 million was recovered by retailers from these thieves.

“The five-year trend shows a continued increase in employee theft in both apprehensions and recovery dollars.  This past year is the first decline, which was very minimal, in both shoplifting apprehensions and recovery dollars. In four of the past five years both shoplifting and employee theft apprehensions and recovery dollars have increased, and in many cases, this is with a reduced loss prevention/asset protection staff.  The losses are real and the theft problem is only getting worst,” says Doyle.


 

Employee Theft and Shrinking

It is not surprising that employee theft and shoplifting increases every year.  With online “chat rooms” where shoplifters share their “methods” and the many ways they can get away with shoplifting, it is not surprising the losses across the globe are reaching staggering amounts. 

In 2013, the losses due to shoplifting amounted close to $16 billion globally, a 34% increased over the previous year.  The National Retail Security Survey revealed that in 2015 retail lost an approximate $45 billion due to shrinking, up by more than a billion from the previous year.

What are the expectations for 2016, and 2017? What will the losses amount to this year?

For more about this and other informational topics, follow the links below.


Employee Theft on the Rise According to Latest Retail Survey

Major retailers lost over $44 billion in thefts by customers and employees according to Jack L. Hayes International’s annual Retail Theft Survey.

Wesley Chapel, Fla. — Jack L. Hayes International, a leading loss prevention and inventory shrinkage control consulting firm, has released its 29th Annual Retail Theft Survey.

According to the survey, 438,000 shoplifters and dishonest employees were apprehended in 2016 by 23 large retailers who were able to recover over $120 million from the thieves.

“In 2016, dishonest employee apprehensions increased almost 10%, with the dollars recovered from these dishonest employees up nearly the same amount (9.3%). While shoplifting apprehensions and the dollars recovered from these shoplifters decreased ever so slightly, 0.2% and 0.9% respectively”, says Mark R. Doyle, president of Jack L. Hayes International.

According to the survey, one out of every 27 employees was apprehended for theft from their employer in 2016. The total number, 53,786, is an almost 10% increase compared to last year.

Over $42 million was recovered from dishonest employees in 2016, up 9.3% from 2015.

Survey participants apprehended 384,296 shoplifters in 2016, a slight decrease of 0.2% from the prior year. The average shoplifting case value in 2016 was $203.18, a slight decrease from 2015 when the value was $204.57.


C-stores may suffer from a bundle of cash-related issues, but tech-driven solutions are on the way.

One of the show-stopping numbers from the musical “Cabaret” includes the famous refrain, “Money makes the world go ’round.”

But money also makes the world of convenience retailing complicated. And problems such as cash miscounts, sticky-fingered employees and lack of data around dollars can stop the show for eager-to-perform operators who have to devote valuable time and resources to solving these snags.

To help shine a spotlight on the currency concerns c-store retailers face, CSP and Technomic conducted their seventh-annual cash-management report, commissioned by FireKing Security Group (complete results below). Finalized in March, the study surveyed 175 convenience operators who make or influence choices related to cash flow, banking and cash management in their stores. Thirty-seven percent of respondents operate one store, while 63% operate two or more locations.

Results from this year’s study reveal big concerns—and opportunities—for retailers’ cash-handling practices.


The Amazon Approach to Groceries Won’t Replace Stores

It’s a model that could thrive in dense, affluent areas. Most areas are neither dense nor affluent.

For a certain kind of urban professional, Amazon and Whole Foods are brands that define the consumption of staple goods: the weekly trip to pick up cheese, produce, maybe some pasture-raised organic beef; and the nice UPS man dropping off everything else, from toilet paper to truffle oil. On Friday, those folks learned that they are facing a future of truly one-stop shopping: Amazon.com Inc. plans to acquire Whole Foods Market Inc. for $13.7 billion.

But what about the rest of America? Well, if you happen to work for rival grocery chains, the news is not good. Competitors from Costco to Kroger to Dollar General saw significant chunks knocked off their market capitalization. Other casualties may include Walmart, the $15-an-hour minimum wage (Amazon is aggressively experimenting with cashierless stores), and the rather unique corporate culture that drives Whole Foods.