The holiday season is a wonderful time of year, especially for business owners. With the holidays comes a ton of shoppers. If you have been struggling to keep your business afloat, it is a chance to make a great profit. If you are a criminal shoplifter, it is a great time to have the odds in your favor, and lessen your chances of getting caught. It only seems fair that the odds be in favor of the house, your business, but when it comes to preventing shoplifting that isn’t necessarily the case. There are a few things you can do this holiday season to better your odds, prevent shoplifting and maintain profitability.
The first and most important thing you can do to protect your business is to secure your merchandise. Whether it is clothing, cocktails, or cardboard boxes, there is a great selection of items of Alpha Security tags, to EASy Bottles, to Alpha spider wraps. Implement these different devices by employing a consistent merchandise protection strategy. During the holidays, you probably don’t want to over-secure your stock, preventing some paying customers from buying. Ensure that you are aware of what products need the most protection. Using these security items to protect your merchandise, along with a sound and consistent protection strategy is the best first defense against theft during the fourth quarter.
Second, consider the placement of your merchandise in the store. I know that you want to entice buyers with some of your most popular items in the window. But are those popular items also popular for shoplifters? Typically, trends in shopping parallel trends in shoplifting; back to school shopping is paralleled by children’s clothing theft, summer swimsuit shopping is mimicked by bikini and board-short theft, etc. Make sure that if those items are potentially enticing to shoplifters that they are properly secured. Likewise, try to make sure that your employees will have a direct line of sight to those items from where they will be frequently working. Many retailers have merchandising associates folding clothing at the front of their shops, where they can greet customers and identify potential thieves from the get-go.
This leads to the third and final tip for preventing shoplifting during the holidays: ensure you are adequately staffed. Sure, you want to make sure that you are well staffed to meet the demands of more customers, and larger volume of stock. But being well staffed also means having more eyes to spot our possible pilferers. Couple this adequate staffing with some good loss prevention training. Whether the training be from a loss prevention seminar or from store management, training associates on what suspicious behaviors to look for will be important for protecting the store. Remember, employees can just provide great customer service statements, even to potential shoplifters, to deter them from stealing your stock.
While working loss prevention for a small clothing shop, I remember spotting two females in the back of our ladies’ department. The girls were looking at the ceiling and for anyone watching their activity, appearing very nervous. As they selected some sweaters (while looking around, and not at the sweaters), they quickly stuffed their bags. I knew they did it, but I wasn’t able to see their hands place the merchandise into their bags. I decided to offer them great customer service. I went to the area and asked if they would like me to hold those sweaters at the front for them. They declined, went around the corner, dumped the sweaters on the table, and quickly left the store.
For more information contact us: Prevent Shoplifting or call 1.770.426.0547
The holiday season is a wonderful time of year, especially for business owners. With the holidays comes a ton of shoppers. If you have been struggling to keep your business afloat, it is a chance to make a great profit. If you are a criminal shoplifter, it is a great time to have the odds in your favor, and lessen your chances of getting caught. It only seems fair that the odds be in favor of the house, your business, but when it comes to preventing shoplifting that isn’t necessarily the case. There are a few things you can do this holiday season to better your odds, prevent shoplifting and maintain profitability.
The first and most important thing you can do to protect your business is to secure your merchandise. Whether it is clothing, cocktails, or cardboard boxes, there is a great selection of items with Alpha Security. Tags, EASy Bottle, and Alpha spider wraps. Implement these different devices by employing a consistent merchandise protection strategy. During the holidays, you probably don’t want to over-secure your stock, preventing paying customers from buying. Ensure that you are aware of what products need the most protection. Using these security items to protect your merchandise, along with a sound and consistent protection strategy is the best first defense against theft during the fourth quarter.
Second, consider the placement of your merchandise in the store. I know that you want to entice buyers with some of your most popular items in the window. But are those popular items also popular for shoplifters? Typically, trends in shopping parallel trends in shoplifting; back to school shopping is paralleled by children’s clothing theft, summer swimsuit shopping is mimicked by bikini and board-short theft, etc. Make sure that if those items are potentially enticing to shoplifters that they are properly secured. Likewise, try to make sure that your employees will have a direct line of sight to those items from where they will be frequently working. Many retailers have merchandising associates folding clothing at the front of their shops, where they can greet customers and identify potential thieves from the get-go.
This leads to the third and final tip for preventing shoplifting during the holidays: ensure you are adequately staffed. Sure, you want to make sure that you are well staffed to meet the demands of more customers, and larger volume of stock. But being well staffed also means having more eyes to spot our possible pilferers. Couple this adequate staffing with some good loss prevention training. Whether the training be from a loss prevention seminar or from store management, training associates on what suspicious behaviors to look for will be important for protecting the store. Remember, employees can just provide great customer service statements, even to potential shoplifters, to deter them from stealing your stock.
While working loss prevention for a small clothing shop, I remember spotting two females in the back of our ladies’ department. The girls were looking at the ceiling and for anyone watching their activity, appearing very nervous. As they selected some sweaters (while looking around, and not at the sweaters), they quickly stuffed their bags. I knew they did it, but I wasn’t able to see their hands place the merchandise into their bags. I decided to offer them great customer service. I went to the area and asked if they would like me to hold those sweaters at the front for them. They declined, went around the corner, dumped the sweaters on the table, and quickly left the store.
For more information contact us: Prevent Shoplifting or call 1.770.426.0547
