How many times have you caught yourself in a conversation with another manager or a supervisor discussing a seasonal merchandise question or an inventory preparation question and found yourself saying, “I think we did it this way” or “ It seems to me customers were buying such and such last year”? It can be frustrating, especially when the discussion may influence whether an item should be carried or if it was carried the prior year was it a flop? The same thing happens with inventory. Did we start prepping 5 days out? No? Maybe it was 3 days out. Having checklists can make these conversations fewer in number and improve productivity as well as sales performance.
How do you get those checklists? There has to be a starting point and that is going to be a brainstorming session with the management team. If you have no empirical data saved from the past year you will need to begin anew and then establish a baseline for what information you will collect over the next year. Planning will be easier and you can modify your checklist at next year’s planning meeting making adjustments based on what worked and what didn’t work (you may even call it a “What Worked/What Didn’t Work” session. Begin this season start listing the things you have done to prepare for this year. Here is a short list of some of those things you might consider placing on that list:
- What seasonal merchandise did you bring in? Sunglasses, coolers, flip-flops, swimwear might be items some of the items you normally would not carry but added to your store in April or May. If you carry groceries you may have added more sports drinks, cold desserts or traditional summer favorites such as watermelon, cantaloupe, corn on the cob, or apples. Maybe you tried some vendor suggested drinks in your front checkout lane coolers. List those items and keep track of your sales for them.
- Where is your product placement for new/seasonal items? Have you set up new fixtures? Did you have fixtures stored and if so where did you store them? It is important to sketch these things out. If a change in personnel takes place by next year someone should be able to pull out those plans and understand them assuming those plans worked and incorporate them in next year’s checklist.
- If you have brought in new seasonal merchandise, what did you do to make room for it? Did you relocate other goods to a stockroom? How did you do that and where did you place it? Map out where goods are stored in the stockroom so your team can replicate it next summer.
- Did you change or extend your hours of operation for the summer to increase sales? If so you need to review the sales data and determine if those extended hours truly helped increase sales. When did you start the hours and when will you resume standard operating times? If extended hours did not make a big difference don’t rule out the strategy until you take a look at how you advertised those time changes. Question results whose outcomes were not what you were hoping to achieve. If you have thoroughly reviewed the strategy and it could not have been improved then discard it. Don’t be afraid to try new things just be honest about results and don’t make excuses if you don’t see the results you expected. Pride can bring down a store quickly.
- Look at staffing. Did you hire additional summer help and if so, when did you hire them and how many? Prior to deciding to just release them look at your sales information, including dollars per transaction and your total transactions. You may release them this year but keep that information and use it for future planning.
As you and your management team begin strategizing and asking these questions you will find you open doors to more questions that will help drill down further. The more points you can identify the better your checklist will be.
Once the plans are made, it will be easier to know which numbers you are going to track. You will have documentation that will serve as the blueprints for building a winning strategy that will be a basis for future years. You and your team will find it a less challenging task when it is time to identify and discard losing strategies. Come inventory time or the next summer sales season your store will be ready to roll out a playbook that will make your store a success!
The laws in the United States concerning shoplifting undergo changes that in some instances put the strain on the retailers and their profit margins.
Loss Prevention Managers and Associates use audits on a regular basis to keep track of merchandise that may be potentially high theft items. The items may be high dollar such as iPods, laptops, computer tablets and so on. The products being audited may simply be easy to steal and resell. Such items can include a variety of products ranging from drill bits to medicines, razor blades and even fragrances. Audits are an effective tool for Loss Prevention departments to quickly identify theft trends and to begin investigating when and how losses are taking place. For stores that cannot afford a Loss Prevention department, it falls upon store owners and managers to investigate missing merchandise. The question then becomes, how does a management team decide what items should be audited or when audits should take place? 
Having to balance a customer friendly environment that makes patrons feel like you want their business and keeping a structure in place that ensures the store is profitable can be difficult. This is especially true when it comes to customer returns. At times, return policies even seem to put store management and loss prevention teams at odds with each other. On one hand, stores are afraid that a strict return policy will turn off regular customers and result in a loss of business. On the other hand Loss Prevention teams in their efforts to…well…prevent losses have a tendency to want to tighten procedures on everything. There is an argument to be made for both sides but there may also be a happy middle ground where both can come to an agreement.
Shoplifters seem to be getting bolder than ever. Much of this is greed. Many people simply want stuff and have no moral compass. Others are emboldened by lax law enforcement or Politicians that pass laws that do little to protect you. Whatever the case be, it has a negative impact on Retailers. We are expected to open our stores, compete, pay employees, pay expenses, taxes…. And make a profit. Shoplifting theft is yet another pressure on us.
The scary shoplifting cases we hear and see on TV, or on newspapers in the United States, are becoming too commonplace to rendered us shocked. 
Recently, I conducted an employee theft investigation for a client. I want to share some of the findings from that investigation in the hopes that you can use it to review your own potential for losses. 
In a recent article published in LPM Insider, “Security Footage Sinks Employee Lawsuit Targeting Employee Bag Checks” by Garrett Seivold, Feb 7, 2018, they discussed a lawsuit brought against Nike by an employee who complained that he was being required to have package checks done when he was off the clock. His argument was that he was not being compensated for the time he is delayed. For the time being Nike has not been found to be excessive in its demands. They were able to demonstrate that employees were only being stopped for an average of 18 seconds for an inspection. This is hardly excessive by any measure. However, courts have a tendency to be inconsistent or a higher court may overturn a lower court decision. While one court may uphold the decision in favor of Nike there is no guarantee this will be true should a similar lawsuit be brought against other retailers. 
Many small and big chain businesses across the country are fed up with the amount they lose due to shoplifting and employee theft.