ESPlus warns over Christmas shoplifting

07 Dec 09

ESPlus is urging retailers to beware of a near 20 per cent increase in shoplifting across Britain's High Streets, after new figures from the Centre for Retail Research, an independent organisation providing research and consultancy for the retail sector, showed the UK at the top of Europe’s retail crime ‘league table’.

“Shops are clearly vulnerable to recession-fuelled crimes such as theft of valuable display stock and other goods, as well as serious attacks on their staff,” said ESPlus’ director Dave Abberley.

“Our integrated security solutions help to safeguard against these threats by monitoring staff using sophisticated real-time and recorded CCTV, while protecting merchandise via cost-effective EAS tagging systems.”

Risk protection
ESPlus has successfully provided risk protection to a range of retail customers including garden centres, DIY stores, electrical outlets, fashion stores and bookshops.

“Good security is good for business because it minimises the risk against theft and higher insurance premiums, together with increase protection for staff,” Abberley said.

The Global Retail Theft Barometer report, which is the largest of its kind, surveying over 1,000 retailers worldwide, shows that an extra £750 million worth of items were stolen than in the same period in 2008.

But employee theft is also rising and now accounts for an average £1585.66 loss per incident. Dishonest staff account are responsible over 36 per cent of all ‘shrinkage’ losses – a trend set to continue over the festive period as retailers recruit significant numbers of temporary workers to cope with Christmas shopping demand.

Exciting benefits
ESPlus’ retail security solutions include a wide range of CCTV equipment from all major manufacturers together with Je-Tec EAS tagging systems. Used in leading UK retail chains and independent stores, these systems offer “exciting operational benefits including integration with the customer’s IT network for up-to-the-minute data analysis”, the company says.

“The Swiss-made Agon and Davos EAS tagging systems, available in the UK exclusively from ESPlus, do much more than traditional EAS solutions,” a statement from the company said.

The technology gives retail planners the ability to download and analyse foot-fall data, with integration into the user’s IT system for real-time data tracking.

Improved digital signal processing (DSP) technology enables wide aisle detection of up to 2 metres and an aisle usage counter allows statistical analysis of customer volumes – both incoming and outgoing, with this information broken down according to direction.

Data can be analysed, with comparison of different periods allowing patterns of shopper movements to be identified. In addition, standalone Davos detection units can also be linked together using the latest version of the Agonet network system. This allows data received from each unit to be combined and analysed centrally.

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