The early experimentation with electronic article surveillance (EAS) began with the prerecorded entertainment industry around the 1980’s. The implementation of EAS in stores with high shrinkage if well implemented gave extraordinary results. The shrinkage rates were reduced from 40 t0 50% in one year, thus gave the explosive growth of the installation of EAS. After 20 years of developing better EAS, retailers are still fighting against organized shoplifting.
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What is source tagging ?
As its name implies, source tagging is the embedding of disposable RF security labels at either the point of manufacture or packaging. Source tagging has been highly successful in the packaged products industry, and retailers, such as discount giant Target, are starting to use it for merchandise such as earrings, apparel, shoes, batteries, videocassettes, audiotapes, computer software, sporting goods and electronics. (Retailers’ interest in source tagging has increased as shoplifters have gotten around anti-shoplifting tags applied to the outside of packages by removing the product and leaving the empty box on the shelf!)
The newest source tags are paper-thin and easily integrated into automated production processes. These tags are applied in primary packaging (or within or on the product itself — for example, incorporated into woven garment tags) and under labels on bottles. Checkpoint experts say their two-dimensional source tags can be invisibly embedded between layers of thin paper stock or cardboard on standard blister packages. These invisible tags, which are deactivated by the clerk with a verifier that needs no physical contact with the tag to work, are especially effective at addressing employee theft and represent a hot topic in retail security today.
EAS Source Tagging 20-Plus Years of Innovation
Every so often, a simple idea catches the imagination, fervor, and engagement of a group of people and is developed into a successful practice that revolutionizes a business. Electronic article surveillance (EAS) source tagging is definitely one of those.
This story commemorates the evolution of source tagging with The Home Depot USA’s 1994 signing and execution of the world’s first contracts committing to the protection of merchandise with a disposable EAS label procured and affixed directly on the merchandise solely by consumer-products manufacturers or their packagers, rather than by in-store labor. That year about 70 million EAS labels were purchased by a few brave consumer-products companies who had been persuaded to participate by Home Depot’s senior merchandisers, operations, and loss prevention management. Almost simultaneously, BJ’s Wholesale Club completed the same process.
These rollouts, and those following closely thereafter, were the culmination of years of oscillating momentum shifts, frenzied product development, cutthroat competition, legal battles, moral suasion, testing and re-testing, apathy, and resistance. The sweat, tears, and eventual cheers wrought significant changes in the way loss prevention practitioners battled shoplifters. More importantly, source tagging stimulated profitable cross-functional cooperation among business partners that flourishes in retail to this day.
Tough times trigger shoplifting epidemic as organised gangs steal valuable goods to order
Britain’s retailers are experiencing an epidemic of shoplifting, fuelled by the economic downturn and organised crime gangs stealing valuable merchandise to order by travelling large distances to major shopping centres.
Theft from shops climbed to a nine-year high last year and the value of goods taken in each incident increased by nearly two thirds as retailers face a £511 million annual bill for criminality targeting their businesses, including rising online fraud and robbery.
The British Retail Consortium’s annual crime survey also exposes a lack of confidence in police to tackle theft from shops with more than 90 per cent of all shoplifting offences going unreported by store and prosecution rates of fraudsters considered “woeful”.
The sharp increase in theft by customers, which accounts for 82 per cent of all crime against stores, coincides with evidence of an increase in so-called “poverty crime” with food and alcohol being stolen in areas of high deprivation.
