Retailing Today: The Dark Side of Retailing

It’s approaching that time of the year again! Snowball fights, holiday music, hot chocolate, winter jackets, and best of all, immense amounts of holiday decorations. Holiday season can be a stressful time of the year for a lot of people. There is so much planning involved being that this is the time of year for holiday parties, gift exchanges, and family visits. A person has to get a lot of shopping done to get everything they need.

In retailing world, we start developing how we’re going to drive holiday sale nine months before the holidays even begin. It is a long and time consuming process. As a retailer, you definitely see the dark side of the holidays. It is a very competitive time of year for all retailers, especially with having more merchandise and more consumer traffic in and out of the stores. I discuss an article that highlights underlying issues involved with security of stores.

It discusses that store inventory is threatened by sneaky burglars, dishonest employees, and organized crime groups(?!?). Who knew? It has been a huge factor for most retailers and it has been draining their profits. Industry leaders are focused on heightening their security lengths like never before. Many retailers gathered at an event called Genetec, which is a group that focuses on video surveillance, access control systems, and analytics.

At Genetec, ORC was discussed, which is an acronym used over and over by asset protection/loss prevention executives. ORC groups are basically the thieves attacking retailers. “ORC groups know what they want and the typical retail establishment is quite vulnerable when targeted by determined pros.” (as said on www.retailingtoday.com). It has truly become a pest to all retailers and their business.

Another huge issue within the retail industry is burglary. Retailers that have several thousands (or any large amount) of stores have many burglaries a week. This is more common in big retailers, such as Wal-Mart or Target. “An ounce of prevention can be worth a pound of cure” (www.retailingtoday.com). Burglars can come in through the front door, back door, and even the roof. They are sneaky people with sneaky plans.

Sometimes the burglars can even be one’s own employees. This brings up another issue in retailing: dishonest employees. Employees know the inner-workings of the store and they are a even bigger challenge if they are part of an ORC group. A lot of retailers do not have the resources to combat this problem, so it can be very draining on profits. It’s especially frustrating around the holidays, when retailers are under great expense pressure.

So in conclusion, retailers have a lot of merchandise to sell and a lot more traffic coming in and out of their stores. Retailers with many stores can’t be on the watch for foul play at all times, so increased security measures are necessary if they want to keep their profits.

Happy holidays, everyone!

Article link: http://www.retailingtoday.com/article/under-assault-retailers-brace-holidays