Black Friday is just around the corner, which means it’s time for retailers to prepare their stores for a higher volume of customers — and a greater risk of theft. Customer shoplifting is the number one source of shrink for retailers, but there are many ways you can fight shrink during the holiday season.
Train Your Employees
Store employees who provide excellent customer service is one of the simplest ways to deter theft, and it already aligns with your goals as a retailer. Here are more ways your employees can help you reduce shrink:
Spot counterfeit money. When employees learn how to spot fake money, they can help reduce the chances of a business suffering a loss of thousands of dollars. Counterfeit money pens and detectors are an easy way to help store associates spot counterfeit money. There are also a few ways to visually detect counterfeit money, such as checking a bill for color-shifting ink or an authentic watermark, which an employee can quickly and easily perform at checkout.
Actively manage store inventory. If there’s ever a time that a certain item in your store is going to sell out quickly, it’s during Black Friday. With a higher volume of customers and sales, it can be easy for employees to become overwhelmed and fall behind on inventory management. Implementing an inventory management system can help by making it easy for your employees to scan and view inventory anywhere in store, even from your point-of-sale system.
Protect Your Merchandise
Another line of defense against shoplifting is protecting your products from theft. EAS tags and labels come in a variety of form factors and technologies so you can apply them to nearly any kind of product. They can even be integrated with your inventory management system if you use RFID technology.
With so many customers entering your store, your first step should be to deter theft wherever possible. An ink tag, such as the InkGuard, provides both visual deterrence and benefit denial without requiring you to install an EAS system in your store, making it the perfect tag for small businesses. The tag can only be safely removed using a powerful magnetic detacher at checkout. Otherwise, when the tag is improperly removed, the ink will explode and damage the item, which discourages shoplifters from stealing. This type of tag is ideal for protecting denim, apparel and designer wear.
Boxed gift sets and electronics are incredibly popular during the holiday season, but they often cannot be protected with the typical EAS pin tag. A tag specifically designed for boxed merchandise, such as our SurfaceTag, can protect your products without interfering with the customer experience. The SurfaceTag is an excellent alternative to other cable-based tags designed for boxed merchandise, which can often be time consuming to remove and annoying to the customer.
How CONTROLTEK Can Help You Prepare
Supplying state-of-the-art EAS and RFID tags. CONTROLTEK’s wide range of EAS and RFID tags and labels offer many options to protect almost any product you can think of. Our tags are compatible with both RF and AM systems, and many can be converted to RFID technology as well.
Installing EAS and RFID systems on time and correctly the very first time. Our First Time Right™ promise has resulted in over 97 percent of EAS and RFID system installations being fully completed on the first visit, one of the highest rates in the loss prevention industry. We document every single installation, and to be rated as First Time Right™ each one must be signed off by our customer.
Providing tamper-evident retail deposit bags. More customers during the holidays means an increase in cash flow. CONTROLTEK’s industry-leading cash deposit bags for retailers have tamper-evident security features and easy-to-use seals to speed up the cash deposit process for your employees.
CONTROLTEK has solutions for every retailer who wants to boost their store’s security in time for the holiday season. Contact us to start fighting shrink today!