I’ve been in the retail loss prevention field for over a decade. The other day my daughter, who’s now 12, asked me, “Dad, what’s loss prevention ?” I was almost offended. “I leave home everyday” I thought, “and bring home the proverbial bacon so that you can have those ungodly-priced tennis shoes, and you don’t even know what I do?” However, her question caused me to do an impromptu poll of my friends and family and I found that my daughter wasn’t alone. A great deal of people have no idea just what loss prevention is, so I decided to take a moment to explain.
Retail loss prevention is a sort of private investigation into various kinds of theft or larceny. The focus of these investigations usually center on shoplifting or organized retail theft, internal theft, embezzlement and credit and check fraud. The purpose of these investigations is to maximize profits by reducing the overall shrink within a company. We use many different tools to complete these investigations including: Exception-based reporting, CCTV surveillance, EAS (or Electronic Article Surveillance), audits, reports, integrity shops and many others.
Why all of the hullabaloo? Inventory shrinkage costs American retailers over $31 billion a year. That’s a lot of cash, clams, bread or ducketts, no matter how you look at it. Why should the average person care about retail loss prevention ? At some level or another we are all consumers. When a company loses sizable profit due to inventory shrinkage they are left with little choice but to raise prices on merchandise in order to offset that loss. That means higher prices on everything from t-shirts to toilet paper. So, in the end retail loss prevention helps keep life affordable for everybody.
For more information about loss prevention contact us: retail loss prevention or call 1.770.426.0547
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