Retail Trends
Owners and managers of retail businesses have long known that it is a very fine line between profitability and loss in the retail marketplace. Given the fickle nature of consumers, the predictions of ‘what’s hot and what’s not’ by marketing firms, booms and busts in merchandizing strategies and the ever present need to make a store look ‘fresh’ but not ‘changed’, retailers perform a juggling act of these and many other business facets to draw and keep customers.
Many business owners understandably feel that if they meet the needs of the market and their customers, then profitability is a foregone conclusion. Yet according to Florida criminologist Richard C. Hollinger, Ph.D., there is another major obstacle for retailers to overcome: inventory shrinkage.
The most recent National Retail Security Survey released by the University of Florida and directed by Professor Hollinger has found that inventory shrinkage has taken a dramatic upswing. The year 2000 saw retailers nationwide lose an estimated $32.3 billion dollars to unaccounted products, an increase of more than 10% over the previous year. Where is it going? The study shows that the single largest source of inventory shrinkage is employee theft.
Employee theft has grown disproportionately to all other sources of inventory shrinkage, accounting for nearly one half of all product losses according to the National Retail Security Survey. The findings of the survey found that avenues for shrinkage were: employee theft, 46%; shoplifting, 31%; paperwork errors, 17.6%; and vendor theft 5.8%.
How retailers are combating these escalating losses varies from industry to industry, and from company to company. There are many strategies to stemming the flow of products out the side door and into backpacks and lunch sacks. Most companies have several programs operating simultaneously, implementing controls and raising awareness. But the most notable tactic that retailers are adopting is the use of closed circuit television (CCTV) monitoring systems.
Results in the Quebec Retail Security Report 2001 show that the number of retailers utilizing a CCTV system has grown by more than 64% between 1998 and 2000. In the United States, it is believed that CCTV has witnessed even greater growth in the retail sector, with a strong movement away from the traditional time-lapse VCR solution, choosing instead a more technologically advanced solution: Digital Video.
FocusMicro leads the monitoring and surveillance industry with its line of Digital Video Servers. Digital Video Servers far exceed the capabilities of traditional analog VCR systems, displaying and recording crisp, clear, distortion-free color video. The digital technology allows the simultaneous review of video history while continuing current recording activities. The combination of Digital Video Servers and broadband communications provide users with the ability to remotely view video history and monitor cameras from any computer with an internet or authorized LAN / WAN connection.
FocusMicro systems also include a highly adjustable motion sensing technology, allowing managers and security personnel to monitor customer traffic patterns, shopping habits and restricted area access. Configurable alarm systems provide a broad range of reactions to customer defined scenarios, from text messaging notifications to managers to emergency voice calls to police.
