RETAILERS USE TECHNOLOGY TO COMBAT ORGANIZED SHOPLIFTING

Oct 1, 2005 12:00 PM

           

At a major drug store, items such as diabetic test strips, nicotine patches and perfume have been placed behind locked glass cabinets, with a bell to ring for service. Nearly all over-the-counter medicines are behind Plexiglass panels. The new displays are among efforts to combat what has become a significant problem for the retail industry: organized theft. Retailers say rings of habitual shoplifters are proliferating nationwide, particularly in urban areas where retailers and malls are packed close together, and there is easy highway access.

Losses from organized retail theft have topped $30 billion annually, triple what they were a decade ago, according to the National Retail Federation.

Companies are spending millions of dollars on security systems, from software that tracks patterns of theft regionally to complicated fixtures that prevent removing multiple packages at one time. According to a Washington Post article, retailers are using racks that lock for a period of time after one unit is taken, cabinets that beep if they remain open for too long and hangers that lock to a jacket or suit. Some big retailers, including Wal-Mart Stores, Target Corp., Lowe's and Limited Brands, have formed organized crime divisions.

“A store could lose its entire inventory of a popular item by one professional shoplifting ring, making it now unavailable when there should be a week's supply on hand,” Joseph LaRocca, vice president of loss prevention for the National Retail Federation, says in the article. “Stores are being forced to do something about it now because they're not only losing the items, now they're also losing sales.”

The most stolen items tend to be high-priced, widely used products sold routinely in chain stores: over-the-counter medicines, razors, film, CDs and DVDs, baby formula, diapers, batteries, hair-growth and smoking-cessation products, hardware, tools, designer clothes and electronics.

In department stores, thieves will work together, with one distracting a sales clerk and another stealing clothes. Some create high-quality fake receipts to return stolen goods for cash. Others will remove an inexpensive item from its box, fill the box with higher-priced goods, then seal it and pay only for the cheaper item that was originally in that box.

Retailers are also beginning to work together, establishing a joint database of crimes so companies can prove the scope of theft by a particular group, leading to more forceful prosecution.

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