The retail industry has been facing many changes for the last few years. And although the nay sayers believe Amazon will eventually destroyed the retail industry, some experts believe the retail shops are here to stay.
The issues that are affecting the retail industry are numerous though. Shoplifting and employee theft are costing the industry millions of dollars every day. Under-staffed stores, poor customer service and poorly trained employees, are bigger issues for the retail industry than Amazon is.
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Are shoplifters getting it too easy?
Shoppers blissfully ignored a sign that only four garments could be taken into a department store dressing room. With armfuls of clothes and bags from other stores, customers entered and exited the fitting area, without supervision. It was a shoplifter’s paradise.
Two shop attendants frantically organised returns and refunds in a holiday-sale blur. Nobody enforced the dressing room policy, which is designed to reduce shoplifting risks, or watched customers to ensure goods were returned.
Whatever happened to department stores having a specialist assistant who manages the fitting rooms and is paid out of the security budget?
Visible signs of extra security – or much security at all, for that matter – were hard to find at this store. The main exit did not have a uniformed security guard. The handful of staff on the floor made no obvious effort to watch for thieves.
Garden center owners share their stories of recovery and new strategies after thefts and break-ins. J.R. Pandy, a retailer in Ohio, explains how he’s continuing to fight for his business.
For as long as J.R. Pandy can remember, he’s been involved with the day-to-day operations of Pandy’s Garden Center in Elyria, Ohio, a business his parents founded around 1961.
“I think I was born here,” Pandy says of the grower/retailer he’s worked at since he was 12 years old.
Unfortunately, Pandy can also scarcely remember a time his family business wasn’t victimized by burglars, thieves, arsonists and other intruders and criminals. He says the garden center has been broken into and stolen from so many times throughout the years that the individual incidents tend to run together.
“I can’t even fathom to count that many times,” Pandy says. “It’s just an old hat — ‘Hey, we’ve been broken into, oh, great.’”
One of the most costly and recent burglaries at Pandy’s Garden Center came in May of 2015, when thieves entered the store grounds at night and made off with tools, trees, bulbs and other green goods. The thieves even took the store’s van, which was hotwired and driven off the premises.
Are You Doing Enough to Secure Your Stores?
Theft and robbery continue to rise, but new technology and planning can deter.
NATIONAL REPORT — Whether it’s violent crime, robberies, shoplifting or employee theft, convenience stores have been dealing with store security issues for years. New technology is allowing operators to amp up prevention and react faster to incidents, but in many cases — in c-stores and the entire retail industry — the situation continues to worsen.
“I’ve been involved in the convenience store industry for 40-plus years and the risk of loss has not changed. The most worrisome is robbery, and as c-stores evolved into 24 hours, the violence level increased,” Chris McGoey of McGoey Security Consulting told Convenience Store News.
Robberies are up all-around, specifically in convenience stores, as the latest released FBI statistics show robbery up 16.8 percent in c-stores/gas stations from 2014 to 2015. Rosemary Erickson, researcher, forensic sociologist and president of Athena Research Corp., based in Sioux Falls, S.D., says this is the largest increase she can remember in all the years she has been studying crime. Erickson has helped NACS, the Association for Convenience & Fuel Retailing, develop many of its security resources.
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