Early last year, my company began carrying a line of electric dog training collars. Being a pet specialty store, it was important for us to have a very open merchandising concept for our customers. We needed our customers to be able to have as much access to the products as possible, in order to maximize sales all while maintaining very tight payroll budgets. The problem? No one listened when I screamed about a product protection plan. Now, we’re playing loss reaction as we scramble to get Alpha Spider Wraps out to all of our stores.
When our buyers first set out to purchase the new line, which included price points from $99 as the lowest, up to $699 for the top of the line model, no one (but LP) thought there would be a theft problem, so all conversations discussing how to prevent shoplifting were met with an all too common phrase by company management that went something like, “we don’t foresee this being a shrink producer.” Then why on Earth did you invite me to this meeting and ask for my opinion?!
I tried over and over again to make my case; scouring data from any place I could pull it. I even had a spreadsheet that listed all stores that our vendor was supplying and then a cross reference with online retail sites that somehow were getting their hands on the product. Still, I got very little buy in on methods to deploy in order to prevent shoplifting in this category. So, I did what I’ve done more times that I care to say with the corporate guys. I sat back and I waited; waited for them to see what a disastrous idea it would be by failing to protect these items.
It obviously didn’t take long for my stores to start reporting issues with theft. By mid-year, the buyers and merchants were in a literally tizzy. They weren’t profitable. They were (imagine that) losing more of these items than they were selling. Guess who they came running to? Oh, it wasn’t a cordial, “can you please help us”, it was more like, “Why is LP allowing so much theft to happen? Aren’t you guys supposed to prevent shoplifting?” It was about this time that I compiled every email, every note and every meeting agenda I could find from the past 6 months and showed where I had tried (valiantly I may add) to offer suggestions for protection before these units ever had hit the floor. Of course there was the inevitable meeting to “discuss shrink”. I showed up with nothing more than an Alpha Spider Wrap.
Moral of the story; listen to the people that you employ to protect your store’s inventory. We all understand the importance of open concept merchandising and the ability for the customer to touch and feel an item. YOU have to understand that for us, it’s just as important to keep that same product in the store and available only for our paying customers. So when your LP team tells you to use an Alpha Spider Wrap, go ahead and listen to them, they usually know what they’re talking about.
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