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Holiday Loss Prevention: Are Your Stores Ready?

By Juliet Woodward, Marketing Specialist

29-11-2019

2019 was a tumultuous year in retail, with many retailers shuttering stores and exiting the industry. In a challenging economic environment, retailers often experience a spike in external and internal theft especially during the holiday season. At this time of year, Checkpoint Systems encourages all retailers to take stock of their in-store security system and loss prevention practices, plan for the new year and retrain team members on how to spot suspicious behaviour in store. The holiday season is when retailers are most vulnerable to theft due to an increase in foot traffic in store and a large amount of high value gift items on display.

We’ve put together a list of high theft items from the latest Australia and New Zealand Retail Crime Survey and encourage retailers to take additional measures to protect these desirable items.

Apparel Stores
The highest theft items in this vertical are lingerie, branded apparel, sportswear and costume jewellery. Checkpoint recommends that these items are protected with a hard tag in conjunction with a Radio Frequency Electronic Article Surveillance system to deter theft.

Supermarkets
During the holiday season, expensive meats become a hot commodity. They’re often stolen for personal consumption or resold quickly for a profit. Checkpoint’s food safe Meat Label is recommended to protect all cuts of meat during this high theft season.
Milk formula and face creams are also listed as high theft items in supermarkets. Checkpoint suggests protecting Milk formula with a Checkpoint infant formula cap and face creams with Alpha keepers as this additional line of defence is often enough to deter opportunistic shoplifters.

Pharmacy
Vitamins, perfume and cosmetics are all attractive to organised retail criminals and the opportunistic shoplifter. During the holiday season, high value perfume or cosmetic gift sets are often stolen and resold on the black market. Check that all these items in your store are protected with Radio Frequency labels that, when used in conjunction with an Electronic Article Surveillance system, will alert team members to an attempted theft in store.

Electronics
Smartphones, phone accessories and tablets are consistently reported as high shrinkage items in stores. Phone accessories such as headphones are easy to pocket and appeal to the opportunistic shoplifter. Ensure that these items are all protected with Alpha High Theft solutions that offer ‘benefit denial’ protection and a physical deterrent to shoplifting.

Following these tips and protecting these vulnerable items will ensure that you can focus on maximising this busy sales period without worrying too much about theft in store.