Most retailers conduct a full physical inventory count in their stores once, possibly twice, a year. This allows them to reconcile their inventory records to gain a true accounting of what they actually have in stock and provide their auditors with the numbers needed to produce the company’s financial reports. The problem with this counting […]
Context There is an old adage, from whom I know not, which says: ‘you cannot arrest your way out of a shrinkage problem’; in other words it is not a good idea to base a retail loss control strategy primarily upon catching and prosecuting all those who cause loss. The argument goes that it would […]
Background If you had to choose one word to describe retailing, it would be ‘change’. While it has long been a fundamental part of most societies, it is not something that can ever be described as static and unchanging. Yes, the fundamentals of retailing have always remained the same – various types of goods being […]
Background As we have seen with developments in Total Retail Loss, there is an ever growing array of events and activities that can generate retail losses. From thieves entering stores and taking products without paying for them through to companies themselves bringing faulty products into their businesses that end up generating unacceptably high levels of […]
Background While video technologies have long been utilised in retailing – some of the first installations of closed circuit television (CCTV) in a retail environment can be found in the 1970s – their role and indeed purpose has largely been limited by the nature of the technology deployed – analogue systems. This made them hard […]
Background One of the most significant challenges associated with managing retail ‘shrinkage’ is that for the most part, the root cause of why the loss has occurred remains largely unknown. Most of the data that comprises the shrinkage number in retail companies is derived from infrequent and periodic stock takes – counting or valuing the […]
The ever-changing nature of the retail sector has meant that keeping retail losses under control is not easy and constantly requires the development of new approaches, ideas and skill sets for those tasked to deal with it. What is clear is that many if not all organisations have struggled at some point to meet the […]
A relatively recent and growing trend within retailing is to increasingly offer an ‘omni-channel’ shopping environment – give the consumer maximum flexibility in how they can browse, select, pay and receive the products they wish to purchase – buy online and pickup in store being but one iteration of this model. But successfully offering this […]
For consumers, the growth in online retailing has few downsides – where once they were limited to visiting local retail stores to browse, select and purchase the products they wished to buy, now they literally have the retail world at their fingertips, offering a bewildering array of choices. In addition, retailers operating in this highly […]
