Retailers Ought to ID ‘Core Shoplifters,’ Architect Advises

Along with imagining how buyers may use an area, retailers have to suppose extra deeply about how friends or workers can steal from it, advises a veteran retailer designer from HFA Structure + Engineering (Bentonville, Ark.).

“Good retailer designers know to place themselves of their buyer’s sneakers,” writes James Owens (AIA, NCARB) in a column for RetailTouchPoints. However immediately’s rising downside of shrink “requires a sharper give attention to the ‘journey’ of one other group solely—retail criminals.”

Within the piece (“Three Design Suggestions for Preventing Shrink”), the HFA vice chairman encourages retailer designers to start out placing extra emphasis on questions reminiscent of:

• What extra may be achieved to discourage theft utilizing retailer structure, buyer stream, shelf peak, mirrors, lighting and the position of gondolas, merchandise and safety cameras?
• What are probably the most customer-friendly methods to guard high-value gadgets from smash-and-grabs?
• How can we higher combine the most recent anti-theft applied sciences and loss-prevention analysis into our retailer designs from the outset?

Owens, whose agency has offered structure, design and/or engineering providers to Walmart, Goal, T.J. Maxx, Nordstrom, Walgreens and others, observes that abilities developed on the buyer facet also can utilized to the struggle in opposition to retail crime.

For instance, after finding out how completely different teams store and transfer via a retailer, architects with patron experience-focused Matchstick by HFA may develop segmented buyer profiles like “Empty Nester Dad,” “Single Feminine within the Metropolis” or “Funds-Acutely aware Retiree.”

In related vogue, retailer designers may work with retailers to find out whether or not their greatest shrink issues come from “Brazen Smash-and-Grabbers” or quieter, five-finger reductions pulled off by “Sheepish Teenagers” or “Disgruntled Staff.”

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“Thieves don’t precisely use the POS system, join loyalty playing cards or freely supply their cell numbers to get reductions,” Owens writes. “However inside investigations, third-party research by loss-prevention specialists and deep dives into safety footage may present helpful information, together with better readability right into a retailer’s ‘core shoplifters,’ retailer by retailer.”

Extra risk-averse shoplifters may very well be deterred by brighter lighting, decrease cabinets, sign-free home windows or panopticon-like layouts during which they at all times really feel watched. Nevertheless, if brazen thievery is the issue, the retailer may want more durable measures, reminiscent of tethering high-value gadgets to cables, or storing extra merchandise in lock packing containers, behind the counter or again of home.

Click on right here for extra from Owens’ column.