Retailers fighting Christmas battle

Press, 20 December 1986, Page 11

Retailers fighting Christmas battle

Shoplifting appears as much a battle for retailers at Christmas as presentbuying crowds are for the average shopper.

The festive season’s tinsel trimmings and lashings of good will can hide a pitched battle between those who sell and those who steal, according to shop managers.

“Christmas and other school holidays are probably the worst times of the year, although shoplifting is just a fact of life for shop owners,” said Linwood City’s manager, Mr Brian Williams. Most stores stepped up security at Christmas, when the hordes of shoppers made it hard for retailers to do their own policing, he said. Big shops and shopping centres usually employed special security staff, both uniformed and in plain clothes.

Retailers agreed that there were two types of shoplifters — children taking small items and professionals who stole for a living or took goods to order.

“We catch mostly children,” Mr Williams said. “The professionals have got lifting down to a fine art and are much harder to detect.”

Pinpointing numbers was difficult, as the police do not keep separate figures of those arrested for shoplifting. Shoplifting is included in the theft figures. Unless people were caught lifting goods, retailers usually discovered losses only when re-order-ing or stock-taking. Many retailers felt shoplifting was getting more prevalent each year because of unemployment and the state of society generally.

This meant prevention measures have to be stepped up each year. Video and still cameras, alarms, mirrors, electronic tags on garments and , surveillance equipment are fairly common in many shops. The regional manager of Challenge Properties, Mr Brian Keeley, says many shopping centres spend up to $70,000 each year on security. “That’s a lot of money when you consider that last year, many shops lost up to 5 per cent of their turnover to shoplifters,” he said.

Shops most at risk were those selling small goods, such as chemists, toyshops and giftshops, he said. Shop layout could also contribute to the crime. Shopkeepers who created blindspots in displays could almost expect shoplifting.