Protect Your Business from Shoplifting and Internal Theft
Shoplifters assume they won’t get caught. So your strategy is to prove them wrong. The following tips require forethought and ingenuity, but cost little.
- Alert employees are your best defense. Have them greet customers when they enter the store. Train them to be attentive in a helping way. Make sure that all of your employees are familiar with shoplifting laws and establish procedures for them to follow if they suspect shoplifting.
- Make sure you can see everything that goes on in your store. Keep counters low and displays open. Mount mirrors in the corners to reduce blind spots.
- Make it hard to leave your store without paying. Place expensive items in the center of the store away from exits. Arrange tables and displays so there is no direct route to the exit.
- Arrange you displays so missing items are easily noticed. Place small items in neat rows or clearly defined patterns.
- Announce and observe a policy to prosecute shoplifters. The threat of being caught, questioned by police, put on trial and maybe even pout in jail may be enough to turn most shoplifters away. If someone ignores your warning, follow through. An empty threat is meaningless.
Common Shoplifting Methods:
- Bulky clothing – coats, pants, maternity outfits – are often used to hide merchandise.
- Packages, shopping bags, backpacks and large purses are good hiding places and sometimes they have false bottoms.
- Special props include hollowed out books, fake casts, umbrellas, secret pockets, belts or hooks under coats.
- Folded newspapers or magazines are used to hide small and/or flat items.
What to watch for:
- Watch for people with loose or baggy clothing inappropriate for weather, and people with large bags or other props, such as newspapers, strollers, briefcases, or umbrellas that can easily conceal merchandise.
- Be aware of customer’s hands and their pockets or purses.
- Notice open packages, purses, shopping bags and backpacks.
- Watch for customers who are nervous, have wandering eyes, are loitering or lingering in hidden areas or adjacent to the office or stockroom.
- Watch groups of people – especially if one attempts to keep you distracted.
- Watch for customers who consistently shop during the hours when few people are working in the store.
- Watch for customers who visit the store frequently, but make only token purchases.
- Be alert for disturbances that distract sales people and cashiers
Employees are not exempt:
- Some experts believe that businesses lose more to employee theft than to burglary, robbery and shopping combined. Examine your management practices. Make your employees feel that they have a stake in your business. Then they won’t be tempted to steal!
- Sometimes employees only take a few items, like office supplies. Or they use company equipment, like cars or coping machines for personal use.
- Embezzlement and pilferage can get a lot bigger. Cashiers may use “short ring ups” – ringing up a lower prices on the sales register to cover money they have taken from the till. Or they may overcharge customers and pocket the difference or undercharge other employees and friends.
- Embezzlement can go from simple overloading of expense accounts, to payments made to non-existent suppliers, to complicated juggling of the company books.
Watch out for these signals:
- Records that are rewritten so they will look “neater”.
- Inventory shortages that are increasing in size and frequency.
- Employees who refuse vacations or promotions.
- Business patterns that change when a certain employee is absent.
- Customers who complain about errors in their monthly statements.
- Collections that decline.
- Employees who seem sensitive to routine questions about procedures.
