When you think of the Christmas season, you likely picture snow, presents, reindeer, and Christmas trees, but retailers may have visions of security tethers and alarm systems dancing in their head. The holiday season is the busiest time of year for retailers; however, with the increase in customers comes a big increase in shoplifting as well. Businesses lose billions of dollars in stolen goods every year, and most of those losses occur during the holidays. If a business is not careful, the busy holiday season could end up leaving them with nothing more than a lump of coal in their cash registers.
Why Are There More Thefts during the Holiday Season?
It follows that whenever a store has more customers, they will also likely have more shoplifters. However, shoplifters may actually be more likely to steal during the holiday season for a variety of reasons.
Distractions: The bustle of the holiday season can provide the perfect distraction for shoplifters to steal products unnoticed. Retail stores that are unprepared and understaffed can be too busy to actively monitor their store or prevent people from making off with items. Some brazen shoplifters will even try walking out of stores with big-ticket items, hoping that the staff is too busy to notice.
Desperation: Many people are feeling a pinch in their wallets during the holiday season. They may not have the money for gifts they want to buy, so some people will resort to stealing your products.
While some businesses will try to hire extra staff or security guards to prevent shoplifting, these measures may only work for large-sized items. Thieves can still easily pocket smaller, expensive items like cell phones, tablets, jewelry, and accessories.
Preventing Theft during the Holiday Season
There are a variety of ways that retailers can prevent theft at their businesses over the holiday season. We discuss some of the best ways below.
Hiring Extra Staff
While extra staff won’t stop theft completely, they can help prevent the most brazen thieves from making off with some of your items. Staff or security at your business’ door can check customers who set the store’s alarm bells ringing.
Using a Retail Security Display
Keeping big-ticket items behind a display case can stop them from being stolen. While these cases are very effective security, they work better for some products more others. For products that are going to be sold frequently or that customers want to look at, display cases are poor choices as they will need to be constantly locked and unlocked by a salesperson with a key. However, for some things—like jewelry—they will effectively stop shoplifting.
Using Retail Security Tethers
One of the most efficient solutions for shoplifting is using security tethers. Tethers attached to your products can ensure that they cannot be stolen. These tethers secure your products while still allowing customers to look, feel, and handle them; this makes tethers good for both security and for promoting sales. In particular, tethers are frequently used as security for tablet, laptop, and cell phone displays because they allow retailers to show off the products without fearing lost or stolen goods.
Constant Force Displays specializes in retail solutions—including security tethers—that give you the ability to reach and sell more goods with innovative shelf-management systems and display products. For more information on how Constant Force Displays can help for retail success contact us today.
