Lock 'em up!
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Best Buy, Home Depot Lock Up Goods to Fight Theft
Shoppers are finding more empty space on store shelves, but not because the retailer is out of stock. In many cases, the items are locked away to prevent theft.
At a Best Buy Co. store in the suburbs of Houston, hundreds of items including Bose speakers and Fitbit activity trackers have been replaced by small blue signs that read, “This product kept in secured location,” and ask shoppers to find store workers for help.
“There used to be a lot more on the floor itself than locked up in cages,” said Gary Pearce, a 47-year-old manager at a disaster restoration company who shops in the store weekly.
The store is a sign of an endemic challenge for retailers: how to stop theft without shrinking profits or inconveniencing shoppers. Retailers have long dealt with theft, and frequency is down from a peak last winter for some, said retail executives. But theft attempt levels are higher than they were before the pandemic.
Many large retailers, including Home Depot Inc., have been locking up more items while testing other solutions. They track high-risk goods and lock up items in regions or stores being hit hardest, retail executives say. Best Buy BBY 0.14%▲ says it isn’t locking up more items overall than in the past, but continues to do so where needed.
It is a tactic that risks annoying customers and investors. In July a Best Buy analyst recommended selling the company’s stock after he observed conditions in dozens of stores and found items locked up or missing from shelves.
“Putting products in cages certainly deters theft, but it probably hinders sales,” said R5 Capital CEO Scott Mushkin in the report titled “Heartbreaking.” Some stores, like one in Danbury, Conn., were in good shape, said the report, while others were messy or didn’t have enough items easily available for shoppers to buy.
Best Buy declined to comment on the research.
Around $69.9 billion worth of products were stolen from retailers in 2019, according to the most recent data from the Retail Industry Leaders Association, which surveyed members.
Theft surged after stores reopened early in the pandemic, retail industry executives say. In part, the rush to buy more online during that period led to more demand online for stolen goods, they say. In some cases stores have been understaffed due to the tight labor market or staffing choices, which means fewer watchful eyes, say some executives. In addition, well-organized theft groups working regionally have become prevalent, making the problem harder to solve than run-of-the-mill shoplifting.
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Best Buy, Home Depot Lock Up Goods to Fight Theft
Shoppers are finding more empty space on store shelves, but not because the retailer is out of stock. In many cases, the items are locked away to prevent theft.
At a Best Buy Co. store in the suburbs of Houston, hundreds of items including Bose speakers and Fitbit activity trackers have been replaced by small blue signs that read, “This product kept in secured location,” and ask shoppers to find store workers for help.
“There used to be a lot more on the floor itself than locked up in cages,” said Gary Pearce, a 47-year-old manager at a disaster restoration company who shops in the store weekly.
The store is a sign of an endemic challenge for retailers: how to stop theft without shrinking profits or inconveniencing shoppers. Retailers have long dealt with theft, and frequency is down from a peak last winter for some, said retail executives. But theft attempt levels are higher than they were before the pandemic.
Many large retailers, including Home Depot Inc., have been locking up more items while testing other solutions. They track high-risk goods and lock up items in regions or stores being hit hardest, retail executives say. Best Buy BBY 0.14%▲ says it isn’t locking up more items overall than in the past, but continues to do so where needed.
It is a tactic that risks annoying customers and investors. In July a Best Buy analyst recommended selling the company’s stock after he observed conditions in dozens of stores and found items locked up or missing from shelves.
“Putting products in cages certainly deters theft, but it probably hinders sales,” said R5 Capital CEO Scott Mushkin in the report titled “Heartbreaking.” Some stores, like one in Danbury, Conn., were in good shape, said the report, while others were messy or didn’t have enough items easily available for shoppers to buy.
Best Buy declined to comment on the research.
Around $69.9 billion worth of products were stolen from retailers in 2019, according to the most recent data from the Retail Industry Leaders Association, which surveyed members.
Theft surged after stores reopened early in the pandemic, retail industry executives say. In part, the rush to buy more online during that period led to more demand online for stolen goods, they say. In some cases stores have been understaffed due to the tight labor market or staffing choices, which means fewer watchful eyes, say some executives. In addition, well-organized theft groups working regionally have become prevalent, making the problem harder to solve than run-of-the-mill shoplifting.
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Does Amazon.com has theft problem?
Come to think of it, I have never read any report about an Amazon.com warehouse getting ransacked. -
I can understand why stores have to/want to do this.
@Axtremus I am guessing that you cant just walk into a Amazon warehouse. Like alot of offices/factories, I think probably you need some sort of key card, etc. Plus, from the (very limited) pictures i have seen from the inside, they are not laid out like stores with the products on open display easily.
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Employee theft and and the general public are really very different things - much easier to clamp down on the people you're paying to work.
The real problem is the store's apparent inability or unwillingness to stop people from stealing at the risk of getting sued, or shot, or cancelled for racism, or whatever it is. It's a ridiculous situation.
