I was just at McLendon's yesterday outside Seattle, and while I was waiting to ask an employee a question, over the PA a came a message like, "need help up front. A couple just left the store with a bunch of stolen merchandise." So the dude bolted for the entrance.
It surprised me that the announcement wasn't coded in some way (eg, "code 9 at checkout").
It made me feel quite sad, as McLendon's is pretty awesome, and I'd hate for them to disappear.
Everyone of these talks stressed that employee internal theft is bigger than customer theft on the whole.
So managment steals the most, followed by the rest of the employees.
This was in the 90's so things might have changed.
Different entities gave the talks.
I don't doubt that 800k number, but I wouldn't rule out the reoresenative of Milwaukee, or the closing managers, or security guards themselfs.
Everytme I was told about employees theft, they said it's retail security's big secret.
Personally, if they treated employees better, internal theft might come down!
When I go into HD, and am being filmed at least 10-15 times before leaving the store; their us a part of me that feels like not paying for that M8 bolt.
Recorded in 1976 as domestic steel & car manufacturing tanked in the United States taking Detroit, Chicago, Pittsburg and much of the Great Lakes with it.
The count is always wrong.
It's continually updated, but it's still always wrong. Because the amount of labor cost to ensure it's accurate at all times would be a silly use of scarce resources.
Sometimes it's as simple as a customer picking up an item, wandering around, and dropping it somewhere else. Sometimes it's theft. Sometimes it's an incorrect count in receiving.
All of this is an average day at a warehouse store. Walmart deals with the same thing.
I'm no MBA, but if a single store is losing $800,000 of merchandise a year from a single aisle, you could have it guarded 24/7 by guys on $50 an hour and you'd still come out $300k ahead.
Far more likely IMHO is that when the rep said "over $800k of merchandise had disappeared from that aisle" that was actually the loss from all the yard equipment aisles in all stores nationwide.
If they are having $2400 worth of a single model walk in a year, over 350 different items, they'd get to over $800k in the one store in a heartbeat. My money would be on this was in fact just the one store, if not just the one aisle.
So ~15 minutes / 60 x ~360 days x ~2000 stores (US) x ~$30/hr ($20+benefits) = $5.4 M in labor costs
... and that's just to check chainsaws.
$800'000 in thefts from that aisle * 51% for a (slim) majority * 2000 stores = $816M in shrinkage.
If your store is seeing six figure losses due to theft you hire out some Loomis guys or rent-a-cops and park them at both entrances.
That 800k number does seem to get quoted alot in the comments here, I wonder if it's an actual figure or just some part of a training video that sticks with people
We're down to 2 million.. let's select the 10% worst stores.. we are down to $200,000.
They can check other inventory items and check out customers.
Cheaper than a one second ad during the superbowl
So, you're encouraging a business to hire minimum wage labor and schedule so as to avoid paying benefits? And these people (you've just screwed) are the ones you're proposing be granted the responsibility to detect theft?
> let's select the 10% worst stores
Infeasible, as most theft by dollar is organized, which targets a somewhat random scattering of stores, intermittently. Highest shrink retail stores already have additional theft mitigation tech deployed.
> They can check other inventory items and check out customers
Not if they can't be in two places at once. 15 minutes is a fairly middle of the road estimate for: walking to the area, checking the on-shelf number, checking above the rack, and possibly checking the back. If anything, it's already under-estimating the time required.
When your losses are so bad, it's time to invest more in security.
Accounting together with video evidence can more timely detect thieves, and might be worth it.
1. Unless store security catches the thief at the door, many police departments don’t have the resources to track them down. So finding out that you were burgled within a couple days isn’t much better than finding out at a quarterly or even annual inventory.
2. It’s not that big of a problem. From the article: “Organized retail crime costs retailers an average of $719,548 per $1 billion in sales”. Putting that in a more accessible scale, that’s 72¢ per $1,000 of sales.
They then head to their car and leave. You try to take their license plate number. Oh wait it says "tag applied for".
Criminals regularly take the plates off when they do their work, if a cop pulls them over, they can say some story about how they needed to get it reattached, and no cop pulls over a car just because of a "tag applied for" sign because they know it will likely be just that 9 times out of 10, so if they did pull over that car its some other ticket-able offense, but no registration wont be likely part of that ticket.
Maybe you got a picture of their face? Except everyone wears masks now....
All the ambiguity involving that means you can basically just take off your license plate whenever you want and police dont look at as a particularly unusual or noteworthy thing to run across. Even if you dont put "tag applied for" at all most cops just assume thats the situation and wont pull you over for just that unless you are having some other violation going on.
I had a coworker who was robbed earlier this year and the person left in a car with a you guessed it "tag applied for" paper on the license plate section of their car.
Which is one reason online prices can be cheaper.
How would such a policy even work, how would you price and underwrite it, and evaluate risk? How would claims be processed? Is there any evidence anywhere that this is actually a thing?
I've always chalked this up to poor inventory management practices. I've gone to Home Depot for first aid kits, counter tops, smoke alarms, pipe fittings, etc and had the same experience. They show X in stock but none can be found.
We had similar issues when I worked at Office Max in high school, it was usually someone putting overhead stock in the wrong location because they just couldn't be bothered.
For example the spike in theft on Wallgrees in SF did start when they changed their policy about a year ago. Before they changed it I saw the store manager in the Wallgreens on 23rd and Mission literally kick the shit out of people that were trying to walk out with merchandise without paying.
Had a similar experience recently in a Home Depot when buying a power drill. The rep took the drill and handed it to the cashier and I didn't physically touch it until it was paid for.
I'd guess that small businesses aren't as targeted by organized thieves as "big box" stores are:
1) They're smaller in size which means the likelihood of getting spotted by a staff member during a theft is higher
2) The amount (and diversity) of available goods to steal is lower
3) "Big box" stores don't have people carrying guns, their staff has a "don't intervene, we're insured anyway" policy drilled into them, and this is known. A small shopkeeper however? A thief can't reasonably know if the shop owner has a firearm under their desk or will get confrontational if stopped.
> After the experience repeated itself at a second store, I looked on OfferUp and found the exact chainsaw “new and unopened” at about half the retail price.
The really interesting thing is: why does the police not "follow the money" and take out those advertising likely-stolen tools for sale in the open?
https://www.kiro7.com/news/local/tonight-at-5-pm-on-kiro-7-o...
2) doesn't matter as long as what they have is valuable and can be sold on easily. The thieves are not opening a store on their own.
Too costly to prosecute. How can you prove that this specific chainsaw has been stolen? "Yes, I am selling my chainsaw. No, I won't talk to you, officer, unless I am under arrest and I have my lawyer present."
Then you arrest them and what? You need something to show the jury.
When I showed up the chainsaw was nowhere to be found, and after looking high and low and triple checking their inventories, the rep said he figured they must have walked. He mentioned a similar figure saying that over $800k of merchandise had disappeared from that aisle (yard equipment) in the last year.
I think it’s real. After the experience repeated itself at a second store, I looked on OfferUp and found the exact chainsaw “new and unopened” at about half the retail price.
I ended up going to a third store before finding one that actually had the tool in stock. That one had installed a makeshift rig of steel bars in front of their stock, and a rep had to physically follow me to the register and watch me pay for it.
There are videos in the Seattle reddits of brazen thieves going into stores and walking off with whatever they like.
It’s bad enough for the big box stores, imagine being a small business trying to survive that environment!